Shepard's Bizarre Adventure
by Moiderah
Summary: Two years ago, like a stone in the ocean, the Normandy was crash, and Josephine Shepard became a phantom washed away by blood. Now that she's back thanks to an speedy effort by Cerberus, the universe is becoming a very bizarre place, with strange powers and ancient evils sending ripples across the galaxy.
1. Chapter 1

In a distant part of the galaxy, a Collector ship encountered a stone figure.

[=]

Commander Shepard woke up. Her eyes darted around a white, sterile room from her white bed. She tentatively flexed her fingers, before she sat upright...and realized immediately that she was actually in the middle of the room and dressed in her fatigues. Whoever put her here even had the courtesy to wrap her coat around her waist.

She rubbed her cheek, but recoiled immediately at the sudden sting. It was like an incomplete stitch...like someone performed surgery on her. Her world was still ringing. There was a voice but she was only half-listening to it when she noticed her armor sitting in a nearby chair; purple. Gleaming. Loaded with ammunition and weapon aiming software. She stumbled out of the bed, while the voice kept shouting at her to listen.

Instead of listening, though, she instead took a step off of the bed and almost fell over. She held herself up with the nearby wall, and walked haphazardly towards her gear. With each step, the ringing subsided slightly, but she still kept a hand on her temple. "Joker..." She murmured to herself before she slumped down next to her gear.

She started to put on her armor and grabbed the nearest weapon; a dinky fucking pistol. She grimaced; it wasn't the assault rifle she was used to. Pistols were a good sidearm. As a primary, they were shit. Faster than reloading thermal clips, sure, but they were a last resort.

Suddenly, as she held the gun, she felt a sharp pain in her arm. She turned her head to her still-unarmored right shoulder, and noticed something peculiar.

An arrow. Immediately, her omnitool sprang to life, pumping the area full of medigel and adrenaline as she yanked the arrow out of her shoulder and let it clatter against the hard metal floor. Her eyes scanned the room as she raised her pistol towards the assailant and squeezed off several rounds into a nearby fire. They hit nothing but a shadow among the flames, the sound of metal crunching hiding her gunshots. She kept the gun in her dominant hand as she took a glance towards the thing she yanked out.

The arrow that she removed seemed ornate. Golden. She stared at the thing, before she quietly put it on her back. Whatever it was, it could be answered later.

Or never.

Because the entire place was on fire.

And the arrow was probably gonna be on fire, too.

She finished putting on the armor, when out the corner of her eye she saw a blue hand dash towards her headset and grasp it. It tossed the thing towards her, before vanishing just as quickly as it appeared. On instinct she caught the headset, but she still stared right at where this evil hand once was.

She shook her head. Whatever happened to her, it probably just made her start seeing things. "This is-" She grunted a little in pain. Her throat felt unused and dry. "-Commander Shepard." She said to the still-pleading voice. "Who the hell are you?"

 **[SHEPARD'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE]** **  
** **[PART ONE: SUICIDE DRIVERS]**

Minutes later, Shepard charged through the halls, armed with a pistol and a glowing omni-blade. She dashed from cover to cover, jamming a LOKI mech in the chest, before shooting one twice in the head and a third in a knee joint. It toppled over, tripping two others before she quickly shot it in the head and popped out a thermal clip.

"Moving through halls. What's your status?" She asked quickly.

"Still holding." On the other end, an Australian woman spoke quickly. "I'm moving through the halls at a decent pace. The mechs aren't much against biotic force."

Shepard shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Where's the Taylor character?" As she spoke, she beheaded another mech before she kicked it into a wall. "Last I checked he was ahead."

"He hasn't moved."

"Good." The machine exploded, and just as Shepard looked up, she saw another aim the barrel of its gun at her. She raised her own weapon immediately, but not before eight hands _grabbed_ the head of the mech and _crushed_ it _.  
_  
Her eyes almost bugged out of her skull as the head was condensed into a tiny, marble-sized ball of white-hot metal. The things' hands hovered just above the ball before a full silhouetted figure, dressed in loose-fitting robes, emerged from behind the edge of her vision. Shepard recoiled on instinct, before she noticed that this spirit moved away, almost in sync. The condensed ball of metal danced in the air while the rest of the machine exploded, causing the kinetic field around Shepard to shimmer with electricity.

And then, the figure punched the glowing metal ball seven times with seven arms in less than a second. The eighth sent it _flying_ through the air, through two LOKI mechs and into a door, blowing it apart and obliterating the chest of the hostile YMIR right behind it. Shepard dashed out, still disoriented, before she noticed a wide-eyed and slightly terrified Jacob Taylor standing beside the door.

"I'm Commander Shepard." She breathed. "I just fought through a wall of mechs." _And weird shit is going on._

"I don't remember us puttin' a goddamn _railgun_ in there." Jacob said quickly. "And uh...last I checked you had a scalpel in you."

"Hello to you, too." Shepard muttered, before she noticed some mechs shooting. Without much thought, she activated her adrenaline, before she fired four times at the mechs across a chasm. It took them less than a second to fall. "Also, weird shit. The hell did you people do to me? The hell did you do with my ship? The hell did you do with my _crew?_ "

"Long story." Jacob said back. "What're you doing up anyway?" A gunshot whizzed by his cover, forcing him to recoil back behind a bulletproof pane before Shepard instinctively joined him.

"Woken up by Lawson."

"Miranda?" He asked.

Shepard paused. "She never said her first name." Shepard murmured. "Who the fuck is she?"

"Ran the thing that brought you back from the dead." Jacob said back. "Speaking of, welcome back to the land of the living."

Shepard's eyes almost bugged out of her skull for the second time that day.

[=]

On the other end, Miranda Lawson raised a hand to the comm on her ear. "Lieutenant Taylor?"

"Captain! I have Shepard!" He said back. "Where the hell are you?"

"Making my way through." Miranda raised a pistol. One shot, a robot was downed. A second shot, the one right behind it fell. Third, fourth, and fifth, and another that was charging out of cover was knocked backwards, causing another to stumble. She raised her off-hand, and just as she did, biotic power warped the air around it.

Suddenly, the LOKI mech's chest had the structural integrity of tissue paper. The head sloughed off of the body, and the arms fell to the ground with a clatter and a clang. The robot behind stepped back to avoid further damage, only to be struck by an overload from the omnitool.

"Speaking of," Jacob fired blindly from behind cover, "We're fucking _pinned._ Nothing's happening!"

"Give me a second." Shepard murmured. "...Oh cool. I still have it."

"Have _what?"_ He replied, before Shepard turned towards a locked door.

"Combustion function."

"Combusti- _what?"  
_  
He didn't have time to react as an explosive round slammed into the locked door behind them and blasted the lock to pieces. The door's hologram flickered before she charged forwards. "Come on! Let's move before more get over here!"

Jacob muttered under his breath. "Jesus, Shepard."

"I ain't Jesus, but my name _is_ Shepard." She shouted back from behind the door, before she let out an excited squeal. "Oh my god an _M-100!"_ Followed quickly by a shrug. "Oh cool a Katana. Prefer scimitars, though. Faster rate-of-fire."

 _"Jesus,_ Shepard."

[=]

A door slid open, revealing Wilson as he stumbled around the room, delirious from blood loss. He glanced up, just in time to notice a shadow across the wall. His eyes followed the trail, and in front of a nearby light, with the smoking remains of another LOKI mech on the floor was Miranda, her face hidden by shadow.

"Laws-!" He started to shout, before a cough cut him off and sent a mix of phlegm and blood to the ground. He wheezed, before he cleared his throat as much as he could and he wiped his chin _._ "They nailed me good."

Miranda walked forwards. "Looks the part."

"Wouldya mind handing me some medigel?" His tone was clipped. "I don't feel too good."

"After one more thing." Miranda walked towards him, before she fired once. His kneecap exploded, and as he screamed in agony, she walked into the red light of the floor guide. "Explain to me what you were trying to accomplish."

"What the _fuck are you talking about."_ He sputtered, before she raised his PDA.

"I appreciate that you were trying to kill me first, but next time, try not to put everything in your _journal."_ She tossed it at his feet. "Sorry for any ill-will, but you realize what you were signing on, for."

His eyes widened, before he clenched his teeth. "F- _fuck you,_ you overworking- _"_

 _"Cunt._ Yes." She leans forwards. "You really need to use other words once in a while. It got boring reading that word over and _over_ again in your logs. Similarly, your postal fantasies were oddly consistent with this even right here. Activate the mech in my office _first,_ then kill that intern down the hall for being an, and I quote, 'insubordinate little shit'. He was only twenty-three."

Wilson just stared as she walked around him. "I don't blame you for thinking it would be easy, but you didn't quite plan on your own mechs turning against you? The Cerberus OS doesn't pick sides after it's been tampered with, Doctor." She pulled the slide back. The heat sink was cool. "You were one of our best." She said, before she raised the pistol to his head. "But you just killed everyone in this facility. I can't just let that go."

[=]

Shepard kept herself close to the edge of the doorway, before she raised her omnitool and waved it across the door. There was a hiss of hydraulics as the doors slid open, revealing Miranda with a still-smoking gun. "Lawson, I'm guessing?" Shepard asked, before her eyes darted to the corpse on the ground. "Wait, isn't that...?"

"Wilson. What's left of him." Miranda pointed her gun towards the ground. "And you must be Shepard."

"Why the hell'd you _kill him?"_ Jacob sputtered. "He-!"

"Was the reason why everything's going wrong. Over fifty workers are dead because of _him."_ Miranda turned towards a different door. "Save the sympathy for someone who's actually worth it."

"Fucking cold." Shepard mumbled. "Also, answers. They'd be nice. Where the hell am I and what happened?"

"Jacob told you some bits." The doors slid open as Miranda's omnitool flickered out of existence. "Did you tell her that she was out for two years?"

Shepard gagged. "Wait, _what?"  
_  
"That's a _no."_ Miranda sighed.

"She was too fast." Jacob said back. "Not my fault that she didn't give me time to _talk."  
_  
"Are... _two years?!"_ Shepard screamed it. "I've been out for _two fucking years?!_ What about the Reapers?! The council! My _crew!"_ Her words blended together. "Jesus christ what if Wrex tore Garrus apart or Liara and Tali had a fight and-!"

"I don't remember Shepard being this neurotic." Jacob said back.

"PR is different from reality." Miranda said back. "This matches her profile."

"Jesus Christ are any of them even _alive-!"_

 _"Yes, Shepard."_ Miranda grabbed the other woman's shoulders. "Calm down. Most of your crew survived the downing of the Normandy."

"Most?" Shepard stared at her. _"Most?"  
_  
"Your crew suffered a total of twenty three-casualties." Miranda stared. "...Twenty four, if we were to include you."

[=]

The shuttle screamed out of the station as an entire chunk of the facility was purged and ejected, sent tumbling down a cliff face. As they flew by, Shepard buried her face in her hands as Miranda laced her fingers together. Nobody said a word as it soared above the planet's surface, before turning towards a completely different facility.

Eventually, Miranda broke the silence. "I thought you were used to death, Commander."

Shepard didn't respond.

"Well...first thing's first. We still need to make sure you're..." She glanced the soldier up and down. Her face was long and thin, her chin was sharp and her eyes were narrow. Her hair was a dark brown, matching her eyes. The scars from surgery were still fresh, and some even glowed from the synthetic tissue beneath. "...functional."

"Come on, give her a rest." Jacob said back. "She woke up and had to shoot up a bunch of mechs almost _immediately."  
_  
"It's fine." Shepard said back. "...What is it."

"Well...a few memory tests." Miranda looked up. "Full name?"

"Josephine Shepard."

"Middle name, please." Miranda adjusted her clipboard.

"Josephine 'Giovanni' Shepard."

"Your history?"

"Born on earth. Parents either died or left me to rot. Joined Alliance because Earth is a shithole." She wrinkled her nose. "Joined Alliance military as soon as I could. Promoted to Captain within half a decade. Lost my crew on Akuze...I was the only survivor."

"And two years ago...?" Miranda waved a hand.

"You know that." Shepard furrowed her brow.

"You're right. I do." Miranda smiled. "I know _all_ of the answers. I want to hear _you_ describe it."

Shepard clenched her teeth. "I lead a hunt for Saren that lasted almost three months. I killed him, as well as the flagship-"

"Stop." Miranda raised a hand. "...flagship?"

"It's what's it's _officially_ classed as." Shepard's frown deepened.

"I didn't ask for the official class." Miranda replied. "I asked for the truth." She put her hand down.

"...I lead an assault on the Reaper, Sovereign, a synthetic abomination, and stopped an invasion. I lost a crew member in the hunt. Kaiden Alenko. A good man." She glanced up again. "And after that, instead of listening to me, even though I saved them, I was sent on a hunt for the _Geth."_

"But the Geth are just a tool."

"You don't think I knew that?" Shepard growled. "Do you know how much it pissed me off that I had to hunt the _Geth?_ They are _nothing_ compared to the Reapers. I can mow down Geth. I had an _LMG,_ a _shotgun,_ a _rifle,_ and a _fucking rocket launcher._ They were _nothing."_ Shepard's voice picked up. "But the Reapers? We can't do _shit_ against them. The Protheans couldn't, and I know because _I'm the only goddamn one that could understand them._ My fucking _Prothean expert_ couldn't fucking understand them. And with all my fucking warnings, despite everything I tell them, the council sends me to hunt _fucking game."_ She ground her teeth together, before she stood up and screamed. "And all I got was my crew _killed!_ So that's what happened _two years ago, Lawson."_ She sat. "And I hope to _god_ that's all."

Jacob's eyes darted between Shepard and Miranda. Shepard was still panting, visibly enraged. She inhaled deeply, while Miranda simply jotted things down on a clipboard. His mouth hung open, before he shut it.

"Actually, it is." Miranda said back. "You're intact. Actually, I think that's the most candid interview you've ever had."

"Is it, now?" Shepard took another deep, slow breath.

"The one on the citadel was way, way too squeaky clean."

Shepard smirked slightly. "I guess...but still. Two years."

"Two years." Miranda stood up. "I can't blame you for being disoriented."

"Understatement of the fucking century."

[=]

A man in a suit sat in a chair. He tapped his cigarette against the edge of an ashtray, as a bright star shined behind him. His suit was well-kept, his body was lean and toned, and he kept a large array of equipment behind him. His face was rough and square, his synthetic eyes glowed among the darkness of his room, but most of all, he was perfectly symmetrical.

Every bump on his skin from the left to the right matched. His ears were perfectly aligned. His teeth were prim and proper...and in front of him came a flicker of light and a woman dressed in purple armor. She glanced around the room, confused, frightened, even. "Commander Shepard."

"...Sir." She said as she shook her head. "We aren't meeting in-person?"

"A necessary precaution. You and I both know why." The man leaned forwards.

"Cut the shit." Shepard said icily. "Don't act like you're my friend."

"Personal feelings aren't going to help you, Shepard." The man took a drag of his cigarette. "Humanity is facing something far, far bigger than you could ever hope to comprehend."

Shepard didn't respond. Instead, she pursed her lips and stared forwards. "So is that why you brought me back?"

"You're a valuable asset, Shepard." The man pressed the butt of his used cigarette into the tray. "Who else can claim that they fought a Reaper and survived?"

"Who else can speak like a condescending prick?"

The man smiled. "I am the reason why you are still here. By all rights, you should be dead." The man turned his eyes up. "Skull fractures. Brain damage. Spinal trauma. Heart was outright removed upon impact with debris. Internal injuries, numerous. cellular decay due to subzero temperatures and lack of oxygen due to exposure to vacuum. And those are just the beginnings of what killed you. By all rights, what was left of you was nothing but meat and scattered bone. What we performed was, by all means, expensive necromancy."

Shepard didn't reply immediately. Instead she lowered an arm, before he turned to face her again.

"Let's face facts. You may be one of the most influential, and _powerful,_ women in the galaxy. But let's not forget why you walk again." He leaned back into his chair. "And that reason is still to protect humanity, isn't it?"

"It's to protect _the Galaxy."_ She said.

"Then it would be mutually beneficial to work with us? Humanity is a part of our galaxy." He lit a new cigarette. "You work with us. We provide credits and resources. Your new synthetic organs get maintenance. For free." His eyes gleamed again. "I trust you, Shepard."

As her image flickered away, a shadow emerged behind him. "Did she receive the arrow?" He asked.

The shadow nodded.

"Good." He took a drag. "Then let's see how her Stand will manifest itself."


	2. Chapter 2

The hangar was black, with only the lights of a nearby glass hallway placing a thin outline on the ship within. Everything stood still among the shadows, before a pair of figures, one tall and dressed in thick armor, and the other limping with a cap and machine-assisted legs, walked out into the hall.

"I can't believe you're really going with them, Joker." The tall figure, a woman, said flatly.

"Well, yeah." The limping man shrugged. "But let's be blunt, it beats the hell out of the Alliance and C-sec."

"They bombed an Asari ship."

"Two years ago." The man said back. "I mean, seriously, didn't the Alliance do some skeezy shit too?"

The woman froze, before she waved her hands around. "...Okay, you have a point."

"So therefore I can walk as long as I pilot what they want me to pilot, because hey..." He gestured towards her. "I can't believe they brought you back."

"Well I can't either." The woman muttered. "Honestly, I'm still reeling."

"Get ready to reel a little harder." The man pressed a button on his omnitool "Here it comes."

And with that, the hallway's lights turned black, before the hangar itself flickered to life. Floating above the floor, held in place by ME emitters, there was a gleam of metal and yellow paint. Panels were bolted to the side perfectly, with a kinetic field barrier lightly refracting the light around it. A gigantic SR2 was on the side of the ship, giving no questions as to what it was.

Shepard's jaw dropped, before she placed a hand against the glass. "She...they... _you..."  
_  
"They brought her back." Joker put his own hand on her shoulder. "She's crewed up and everything. Everyone willing to come back is already here. Chakwas, me..."

"The squad?" Shepard asked.

"Well," Joker shrugged, "no." He looked back to the ship. "But the gang's here. What we could get, at least."

Shepard shook her head, before a smile crept across her lips. "Well, I guess I just need to get the squad, then."

"Glad to have you back, Commander." Joker gave her a salute, before she gave one right back.

"For once, I'm glad to _be_ back."

 **[SHEPARD'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE]**

In the distant stars, there was an asteroid colony. The thing rotated in dead space, a nigh-impenetrable shield at one end, and spires stretching across space. Bridges connected the spires, and a docking port lead straight to the base of the megastructure.

Deep inside the place, two men worked. One sat in his own building, eating a dextro-amino berry before downing some water. He quickly put his helmet back on, before he let out a whistle and a bullet. A hapless fool's head exploded, before his corpse crashed to the ground.

The other did a very different kind of work. His hands glowed with power as he moved his hands over a patient, keeping his breath level and his energy high. Cut. Dry. _Flow._

And it was then that a slight echoing noise came through the halls. It didn't take long for him to catch the faint sound. He glanced up and listened for this new, menacing sound.

"Moaning noise. Repetitive. Hard to concentrate." The Salarian flexed his fingers as electric power flowed through his fingertips. "Plague is obnoxious. Cannot place source. Desperate need to find it."

[=]

The Normandy touched down at Omega, and minutes later, Shepard found herself walking into a den of pounding music and flashing lights. Asari dancers swung themselves on poles, as people parted ways in disgust.

Shepard walked through and glanced back to Miranda. "Aria, right?"

"That's our contact on Archangel and Mordin, yes."

"Any word on personality?"

"Uh..." Miranda narrowed her eyes. "Strong-willed. Tempermental."

 _"Sounds familiar."_ Jacob murmured while Shepard shrugged.

"Anything else?"

"There's also the words...uh..." She narrowed her eyes. "...huge bitch. Someone was mad."

Shepard walked through, before she nodded once towards Miranda. _"Check the lower afterlife."_ As soon as Miranda departed, she spoke to Jacob via headset. _"Keep backup on Miranda. I'll talk to T'Loak."  
_  
He hesitated, before he walked off, leaving Shepard alone. She walked up the stairways, when a turian guard raised a hand. "Last I checked, Aria didn't let soldiers in. _Especially_ not Alliance dipshits."

Shepard raised a hand. "Spectre."

"There aren't any human spectres." The turian clenched his mandibles. "Nice try."

Shepard sighed, before, under the cover of a sudden lightshow, she kicked his shin, pressed a gun into his forehead and slammed him into the wall behind. The music hit a drop, and she whispered into his ear. _"Do me a fucking favor. I'm tired. I just spent the last two years getting stitched up like a Frankenstein's monster. Let me pass, or I blow your fucking brains out."_ She pressed further. "Do you understand?"

The man let out a low, pathetic whimper and nodded. She let go, before quickly tapping him on the shoulder. "Oh, and if you pull that shit while I'm turned, you won't survive. My shield'll take the hit, and you'll be dead before you can squeeze another shot. _Understood?"  
_  
He stammered, before she forced him away and kept walking up the stairwell. Six guards all stood around, faces mostly hidden by shadow, while the occasional flickering dance light illuminated their features. All were heavily scarred, and all had their eyes on their subject.

That is, until a heavily-armed human walked upstairs to their domain. "I'm here for T'Loak." She said. The guards around her instinctively raised their weapons.

"Who wants to know?" On a couch in front of her, stance open, pose wide and relaxed, was an Asari. Her jaw was square, her chin was thick, and her eyebrows seemed turned into a permanent furrow. Her smile looked like that of a predator's just before devouring prey.

"A very, _very_ heavily armed Spectre." Shepard said. "That shtick never works. I knew who you are the _second_ you pulled it."

"It worked on my last meeting." The Asari said, and as she leaned forwards, her features grew clearer. The tattoos on her face could be seen in clear detail. "And I know who you are. Last I checked, you were fucking _spaced."_

"I got better." Shepard said. "Mind telling your boys to stand down?"

"Only if you put your guns away."

Shepard snorted. "Not gonna happen." Her hand's grip tightened around her shotgun.

"And _that_ is why they aren't putting their guns away."

[=]

Mordin twirled a scalpel in one of his hands and shouted out to the rest of the clinic. _"NEXT!"  
_  
There wasn't a response. He paused. "Need next patient. Time of essence. Where is...?" He turned around, coming face-to-face with an toothy batarian mouth.

 ** _"URRYYYYYYYYYYY..."  
_**  
Before the batarian spoke, Mordin's scalpel shimmered with a ripple of light. He dragged it across the batarian's chest, before flicking it up and spraying blood across the ceiling.

The batarian barely responded, his grin widening. "You _know_ that doesn't work, So-" He coughed lightly, eyes widening as smoke began to rise from his mouth. He stared at the cloud, before he looked down at his wound.

"No star in part of Omega. No _problem."  
_  
The gash exploded into light as his chest dissolved into bright yellow. The batarian screeched in agony, before his chest collapsed into dust, and the head that was still embedded in his fingers fell to the ground. The entire clinic behind him, full of life just minutes ago, was littered with drained corpses.

Mordin shook his head, before he inhaled hard and nodded. "...Plague bigger problem than originally thought."

The response was the cry of something else. A _horde_ of something else. He twirled the scalpel again, before he grabbed a gun and a UV flashlight. "Defense UVs offline. Clinic dead. Corpses of patients." He looked down, before he pressed a glowing hand against a body. The thing screeched, eliciting a grimace from him. "...Zombies. Naturally. Always follow vampires." He flicked a light. "Generator offline. Emergency presumed to be offline. Bad things follow."

[=]

"I'm just trying to find two people." Shepard aimed through her sights. "Mordin Solus and some edgy dick named 'Archangel.'."

"Oh, good. I hope you're killing him." Aria smirked, keeping herself leaned back on her sofa. "He keeps causing trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" Shepard quirked up an eyebrow.

Aria waved a hand dismissively. "The self-righteous kind."

"And Solus?"

"Solus is in the midst of a plague. Particularly nasty one, it's almost a zombie plague. It's been infecting everyone in the dark part of town."

"Dark part of _Omega?_ "

Her smirk faltered a little, teeth bared for a second before she regained composure. " _Literally_ dark part of town." Aria sighed. "Got any plans? I do hope you have plans. Alliance fucks without plans tend to leave some nasty stains."

Shepard raised a hand. "Miranda, you and Jacob go after Archangel. I'll take care of Solus." She stopped the call.

"Not much of a _plan,_ is it?" Aria said, flatly. "You aren't going to survive on Omega."

"I survived _Ilos."_ Shepard said back. "I think I can handle a colony of conmen."

"Ilos?" Aria snickered. "Really intent on pushing that narrative, aren't you?"

"And you're really intent on being a smug shit."

Aria rolled her eyes. "Is that all you needed?"

Shepard opened her mouth to keep up her tirade, before she paused and shrugged, still keeping her gun trained on the asari. "Yes, actually."

Aria furrowed her brow even further than it already was. "Then leave before I shove your face into the screen." A pair of ethereal yellow arms crossed themselves across her chest.

Shepard stared for a second, before she just moved off the platform. She idly wondered if Cerberus could deliberately cause brain damage.

[=]

The marketplace was a mess of noise and people. Batarians, humans, asari, vorcha, turians, all manner of sentient life from across the galaxy mingled with one another as two particular uniformed professionals sorted through the din and chaos.

"So we need to do...what, exactly?" Jacob shoved an Asari out of the way, causing her to stumble into a volus and fall backwards onto the ground behind them.

One finger. She steps over a Vorcha. "Go through." Two fingers. "Meet with Archangel." Three. "Extr-" She bumps into an Asari and stumbles. The woman gasps in sudden surprise as Miranda rights herself, before she whistles.

"Aaaaaand what does meeting with this...Archangel character entail anyway?" This time, Jacob bumped into a krogan, who promptly turned towards him and shouted something about using his spine as dental floss.

"Beats the hell out of me, to be honest." Miranda said back. "Though we can probably meet up through a merc group. Sign up as a pair of freelancers."

"I don't see how that could go wrong."

[=]

Among the towers, a muscular figure watched. A single woman walked through, with some kind of power trailing her. He stared, making mental notes under the hood that covered his face. There was no kind of nature here, he noted.

On the ground, Shepard kept her gun raised. This dark, deep part of Omega was almost pitch-black. Any power that was once here had died a while ago. She kept a light on, as she kept radio contact with the Normandy.

"I'm currently inside the quarantine zone." Shepard said. "EDI, any life readings?"

"None." A female voice replied, before the image of a talking blue ball appeared in the corner of Shepard's visor.

"That doesn't make much sense..." Shepard murmured before she noticed a busted door. She peered inside once, before she grimaced. Two turians were inside, with one human being. The man's organs were splayed across the ground, with a gun in one hand and a hole in his head. "...holy shit."

[=]

Jacob and Miranda sat in a car, dressed in armor. Miranda's set was light, trim. Not too flashy, not too simple. It was enough to carry ammo and her guns.

Jacob's was thick. Heavy. Even had a helmet to hide his face. He glanced over at Miranda to open his mouth. _"I don't think this is gonna work."_ He whispered.

 _"Of course it will."_ Miranda leaned back. _"It's two professionals against freelance mercs."_

 _"I mean, what if they really want that paycheck? Then what? We get our asses_ shot, _that's then what."_

 _"Hey."_ Both of them froze as the batarian gave them the stinkeye. "You fucking _suck_ at whispering." They were silent for the rest of the drive.

[=]

"The turians appear to have tried eating him." EDI said simply.

"Wait, _what?"_ Joker's voice echoed through the comm as Shepard shined a light.

"It killed them immediately." Shepard said. "Anaphylaxis."

"Elaborate way to kill yourself." Joker said back. "And uh...gross. You can't get a feed up here, can you?"

"I can easily give you a live feed of Shepard's HUD. Here, I can give one right now-"

 _"Holy shit!"_ There was the sound of retching on the other end. "That was _not what I fucking needed!"  
_  
"Keep it together." Shepard said quietly, before she moved in to touch one of the dead turians.

As soon as her hand touched its head, the jaw came sliding off. "That's not anaphylaxis." The mandible fell apart completely, with a soft _pat_ upon the ground as the softened shell came apart. "That's rapid flesh decay."

"This doesn't seem like any recognizable illness." EDI said. "It doesn't even seem natural, by any capacity."

"Could you run it by Chakwas?" Shepard asked.

"Of course. And you can speak with her directly, if you wish."

"Ah, even better."

"Contacting Chakwas." EDI said, before the blue ball in the screen vanished, replaced by the face of a doctor as she read a book with a cup of coffee on the table.

She turned. "Oh, commander!" She smiled. "We didn't get a chance to talk before you got back to work."

"Shepard grimaced. "Sorry."

"It's fine." Chakwas waved a hand. "We'll be jumping all the time anyway. Shouldn't be too hard."

"Anyway, just wanted to ask." She looked at the bodies again. "Mind identifying these? I can probably get an extraction for these corpses..."

"No need." Chakwas said. "Just scan them and I can look at the corpses that way."

"Point. I don't think Aria would appreciate a Cerberus shuttle just plowing through her base." Shepard sneered. _"Lord knows I wouldn't."_

[=]

Jacob and Miranda walked through the mercs and Blue Suns. One man in particular was fixing up a gunship, before Miranda whispered. _"Looks dangerous."_

 _"That's a fucking gunship."_ Jacob spat. "Of _course_ it looks dangerous."

 _"I'm going to take out the mechanic."_ Miranda said. _"Keep attention off of me."_

 _"How?!"_

 _"Make an arse of yourself. You seem good at that."_

 _"...That hurts."_

 _"It_ is _the truth."_ Miranda moved off, before she walked closer to the mechanic.

Meanwhile, Jacob awkwardly walked towards a group of batarian mercenaries. "So uh...come here often?"

As soon as Jacob opened his mouth, all of the mercenaries turned to glare at him, including one volus. The short man grumbled, before he raised a hand. "I was in the middle of a _story,_ you _daft bastard."_

"Oh...shit." Jacob turned bright-red. "Sorry. Shit. _Sorry!"  
_  
Miranda grinned, before she tapped the mechanic on the back. He sighed. "Look, I don't have time for pleasantries. Ship needs repairs. Troops need moving. All that shit."

"Wait, you're not just the mechanic?"

"Sergeant Cathka." He says without stopping his work. "This is _one_ part of the job. The rest is making sure that the troops begin moving." He looked at the door. "Poor bastards. That bridge is a killbox."

Miranda looked back as a vorcha began firing towards the building at the other end. It took less than a second for a shot to blow his head apart. A batarian began laughing, before a shot penetrated his cover and nailed him in the head, too. "...I'm going to wear a helmet." She said to herself.

"Not a bad plan. The shots he's using seem to just drill through the kinetic fields like they're nothing." He tapped the ship with his knuckles. "Which is why I'm gonna use this." He paused. "Speaking of..." He shouted. _"Move move move!"_

Jacob froze, before he was bowled over by the batarians _and_ the volus. "SHIT!"

"That's what you get, you humie fuck!" The volus shouted, before he activated a jetpack and began charging forwards. _"HAHAHAHA!"_ He didn't get too far forwards before the shot blew open his suit, and caused dense air to pour out. The pressure sent him flying to the side, shredding the jetpack and sending him careening to his death.

"Great." A batarian merc muttered. "Now we'll _never_ hear the rest of it." He turned back to Jacob. "Thanks, asshole."

Miranda turned back. "So you order them forwards?"

"Freelance mercs are great. There are millions of 'em and they like big paychecks." The sergeant grinned behind his helmet. "And if they die, you don't have to pay 'em. Win-win."

"I can't fault frugality." Miranda muttered, before she noticed something on the ground. A spare wrench, and a screwdriver. One hand takes the wrench and beans him in the back of the head. The man stumbles for a second as blood spills inside the helmet. His four eyes widen, before she nails the screwdriver into the soft part of the helmet. He sputters, blood spilling inside of the helmet as his spine is impaled, before he hits the ground.

"Sorry. Business." Miranda said quickly, before she shifted his body to the underside of the gunship with biotics. _"Good work, Jacob. You did a great job."  
_  
Jacob scrambled to cover as soon as he realized that he was standing too close to the bridge. _"You're awful, Lawson."_

[=]

Shepard kept her gun at her side, before she took a deep breath. Idly, among the blackness, she wondered, before she started to speak. "Hey, does anyone notice this?" As soon as she spoke, she waved eight blue, glowing arms in front of the screen.

On the other end, Joker tilted his head. "Noticed what, Commander?"

"The bloodstains, yes." Chakwas said, before EDI flickered to life.

"Something tells me that whatever is troubling you is not that."

"...Yeah, I have a weird, uh, spirit thing. With eight arms."

"Ooooookay, commander."

"Perhaps the plague is hallucinogenic?" EDI asked.

"No...if it were, my dreams would be a lot freakier." Shepard kept her hands wrapped around her gun, before the spirit turned with her. On instinct, she concentrated, and the eight arms scooped out bits of the scenery in perfect spherical chunks. Eight separate pieces were slammed together into a glowing ball before it was compressed. The spirit held the ball in place, while Joker spat out in surprise.

"When the hell did _you_ get implants?!"

"I didn't. Body never could handle biotics." Shepard waved the arms. "So you're saying you _can't_ see this shit?"

"I can see the _glowing ball,_ yes."

"This seems like some kind of psychokinesis." EDI said before Shepard walked through the dead streets. In front of her was a locked door, with some kind of clinic behind it.

"...hmm..." She glanced at the ball, before she had her spirit let go of the ball. "Aaaand..."

The thing glowed in totality for the first time, revealing her face. The spirit had three eyes, with one placed perfectly in the center of the forehead, and a single nose and mouth. She was dressed in a loose-fitting toga, and her legs spread out as the eight arms _punched_ the glowing ball. _"ORA!"_ They pounded it at the same time, before they began to strike it as many times as possible in less than a second.  
 _ **  
"ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA-"**_ And one final strike, just before it was sent flying. **_"-ORA!"  
_**  
The ball broke apart, with seven smaller pieces splitting off from a larger central piece. The largest piece obliterated the door, while the rest destroyed the frame, sending the two larger bulkheads off of the sliding mechanism. The pieces of the door bounced around the clinic, while Shepard raised a hand to her headset again.

"So uh...yeah. Did you catch _that?"_

 _"YOU BLEW OPEN A DOOR WITH YOUR MIND!"_ Joker sputtered.

"That isn't normal biotics. I will run a database search." EDI said as Shepard took a tentative step inside the clinic.

[=]

Jacob shoved his helmet down and locked it tight while Miranda ran over to his side. "So uh...plan? What's the plan?"

"We run in, kill whoever's inside, then knock on his door." Miranda said.

 _"Seriously?!_ That's _it?"  
_  
"Yes." Miranda coughed. "It is. That's all we really need." She moved from cover. "Now we _move."  
_  
Jacob sighed as he stood up, before a single sniper round bounced off of Miranda's helmet, then his, then blew apart an Asari soldier's skull. Both Miranda and Jacob stared at each other, both of them slightly disoriented.

They glanced back up to the sniper tower, before they started scrambling towards the building. One man was arming a bomb, before his head exploded with the sound of Miranda putting a bullet into his skull.  
 _  
"THEY'RE WITH ARCHANGEL!"_ An assault rifle, clearly not ready for someone firing at a place where Archangel couldn't reach, was brought down to face the new assailant, but it was a second too slow. Jacob met him with a shotgun blast to the chest, with one of the pellets bouncing around into the poor man's mouth.

Another man, scrambling to the door, was hit by a sniper shot from the second floor. He hit the wall and tumbled down the stairs like a ragdoll. Miranda pushed the body out of the way with a biotic shove, while Jacob yanked a man off of the balcony with a biotic pull.

"Where did they get these guys?" Jacob said before he nonchalantly shot another man in the head with his shotgun.

"Omega." Miranda _warped_ a salarian by the door as he tried hacking into the lock. His body collapsed into itself, leaving him no time to scream as yellow blood spilled out of his mouth. The batarian next to him jumped in surprise, before a shotgun round destroyed his shield, and the next blew open the both the door's lock _and_ his chest armor. The door was forced open, revealing a masked turian in blue armor.

He stared at the two, one hand still attached to his sniper rifle, the other reaching for his shotgun. Miranda raised her hands. "We're not here to kill you."

The man paused. "Of course not." His voice was slightly muffled by the helmet. "You blew apart the other mercs. You're either _stupid,_ or you want me alive. What for?"

"Shepard." Jacob said. "She requested you come with us."

The turian didn't move. "Shepard is dead. I'm calling bullshit."

"Shepard _was_ dead, Archangel." Miranda put down her gun. "Shepard _was_ dead."

"And why should I trust the two of you?" The turian stalked by, before he glanced over at the bridge.

"Because otherwise, we're going to be swarmed." Jacob said. "They're coming. They didn't get to call for help while we were slaughtering, but the rest are coming. And they're coming _fast."  
_  
Archangel kept his head trained on them. "You're gonna have to do better than that."

"And also we could have shot you." Jacob said. "And we don't even need guns to do it."

"Sound pretty confident for a couple of Cerberus lapdogs. And why would Shepard work with Cerberus?" Suddenly, another gunshot rang out. This time, however, it was a sniper round that blew a hole in a nearby wall. "...On second thought I might not get that answer."

"They got a _Widow?!"_ Jacob jumped to the side. "Nobody can afford a _Widow!"  
_  
"Well, on _third_ thought, survival now, questions later." Archangel dashed behind a couch. "Take care of everyone inside! I'll shoot the bastards on the bridge!"

[=]

"I died in _space,_ I can blow open doors with my mind, and turians tried eating humans." Shepard shook her head. "My life is so fucking weird. Afterlife. Does this count as an afterlife?"

"You went to a _bar_ called afterlife." Joker said. "Does that count?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Shepard saw movement. She whipped her gun around and trained her light on the source of noise, before she paused. "...Solus?"

A man with a pistol on his holster and a scalpel in his hand stood in a ready pose among the darkness. He froze, before shaking his head. "A human."

"What's going on? Is this the plague that was going on here?"

"Plague, yes." He said back. "N7 logo on uniform. Assumed Alliance. Heavily armed; five weapons on person. Unnecessary. Readied. Battered. Bruised? No human spectres-"

"Commander Shepard." She interrupted. "I'm here for recruitment."

"Recruitment...no human spectres. Alliance accepts only humans among ranks. Cerberus? Cerberus is xenophobic-"

"Actually, that's the thing." Shepard inhaled. "I'm working with Cerberus." She forced the last word out. "I need you on my team."

"Team? What for? Cerberus hiring help from non-human races. Desperate."

"Desperate enough to bring back the dead." Shepard motioned to herself. "We need to stop the Collectors."

"Collectors?" Mordin nodded. "Typically stuck in terminus space. Isolated incidents. What would require help?"

"Because they started targeting human colonies. Thousand have disappeared; they're are almost completely cleaned." Shepard closed her eyes and took a breath. "Is it any wonder that Cerberus is desperate?"

He smiles. "Interesting." He gripped his gun. "Will do. First thing," He clicked his gun, "look for survivors. Extract as many as possible."

"You really think there's anyone left, doctor?"

"Frankly, no." He raised a scalpel and let it glow. "But worth a try."

[=]

Another batarian's head exploded as the turian reloaded his thermal clip. "They're just lining up in a row." He chuckled before firing another shot. The merc let out a scream as the shot glanced his helmet, causing him to lose his balance and fall off of the bridge. "It's like they're begging me to shoot them."

Meanwhile, things were hectic among the stairs. "They're just charging up _constantly!"_ Jacob shouted. "There's no end!"

Miranda shoved another group backwards before Jacob tossed a grenade down, before she groaned. "We're running out of ammo!"

"And _I'm_ running out patience." Jacob raised one krogan, before slamming him downwards, causing the oversized reptile to bounce off of the now-broken stairs and tumble onto the floor. "How many are _left?"  
_  
"I took out the Blood Pack Omega head, the Eclipse Omega head...all that's left is the Blue Suns."

And it was then that Jacob shook. A krogan stepped into the hallway, looming, ominous. He stepped out, dressed in a Blue Suns uniform. Jacob stared for a second as the krogan pointed at him. _"YOU!"  
_  
Jacob looked around haphazardly as the krogan began walking upstairs. "I said I would use your _spine_ as _TOOTH FLOSS!"_ He pulled a shotgun off of his back. "And I _will_ use your spine as _tooth floss!"  
_  
Jacob's breathing grew faster as he raised an arm and tried to force the Krogan back. He was met by a biotic barrier. "Oh, _hell."  
_  
The claymore shotgun gleamed in the lightbulb's glare as he started charging up the stairs. His feet destroyed the steps with every impact. "You can't run from me, _you clumsy son of a bitch!"_

[=]

Shepard and Mordin made their way through the blackened halls of the facility. This particular place looked like a cafetria, with empty tables covered in dried blood and unfinished and rotting food splattered across the floor. Several corpses, dried and rotting, lay there, mostly turian, with some asari and batarian.

There was a still-spinning ventilation unit, and right underneath, Shepard noticed something lying below the shaft, flat on the ground. "Oi, I found something here."

Mordin quirked up an eyelid. "Hm?"

"Right here." She walked over. "That's bizarre."

Mordin peeked over her shoulder. "I believe that may be of some importance."

"You know what this is?" She raised it up. The thing was a stone mask, carved recently, with a shape tailored towards Batarians.

"Have a feeling. This form is strange. Others looked human." He looks further into the halls, straight towards the kitchen in this particular place.

"Wait, _others?"_ Shepard asked.

"Yes. Others." He moved the scalpel and dragged it across the surface. "Without others, would not need STG training."

"Yeah, you're coming on the ship."

[=]

The top floor of the apartment exploded in movement as a gigantic hole was blown in the side by a krogan shotgun.

"So much for the _hidey-hole!"_ Jacob shouted.

Just as soon as he said that, Archangel leaped down, followed quickly by a panicking Jacob. Miranda fired off a shot and shoved a chair towards him before leaping down, only to be followed by the Krogan as he smashed into the metal plating of the bridge. He let out a loud, angry roar before continuing a charge.

"Hell of a _grudge!"_ The turian shouted back. "What did you do?"

"Bumped into him in the market." Jacob said, flatly.

"Oh. Wow. That's it?" Miranda asked. "I find that hard to believe."

"I _swear!"_ Just as he said that, they ran past an empty mercenary facility. The gunship was in the process of starting before the engines immediately burst into flames, lighting the Vorchas that were attempting to start it on fire.

Miranda smirked at her handiwork, even as everyone ran through the halls of a now-empty facility. "We move! We move _now!_ Where's Shepard?"

[=]

"So what exactly is that mask?" Shepard asked as she opened an empty apartment. She saw a family...a _human_ family inside. One mom, one dad, one child. All had bullets in their heads, and the dad held a gun in his own hand. She quickly shut the door.

"Catalyst." Mordin searched a different hallway. He saw bloodstains across the ground, and one body that had been torn to pieces. "Nothing here."

"Catalyst for _what?"_ Shepard looked into a broken window and moved the curtains. Inside was a Varren, looking around for food. It tasted a body, before it spit and started looking elsewhere. It noticed Shepard, before she pulled the curtains shut.

"Simple." He turned. "Transformation. Cannot handle sunlight. Need blood of same species. Will turn to other species if cannot find same."

"Vampire?"

"Yes." Mordin said. "Mask turns people into vampires. Creatures of the night."


	3. Chapter 3

Shepard stared at Mordin as though the salarian had lost his marbles. There was nothing but the sound of wind blowing through ventilation, and a few echoing taps of scavengers, as Mordin stared right back. He coughed once into his hand, nodded once, and opened his mouth to break the silence.

Thankfully, Shepard spoke first. "Are you joking?"

"Am not joking. Humor quite different. Would not joke about vampires."

"I mean I'm dealing with some _really weird shit."_ Shepard waved a hand. "Like, I have some kind of spirit psychic power thing. I got _spaced_ and _fucking killed_ and _revived."_ She clawed at her head. "I mean, like...fuck, for me it's like a few days ago I was hunting Geth and now I'm _dead_ except _not."_ She pointed at him. "And you're telling me that this place was killed by _vampires?"  
_  
"Yes. Vampires." He swallowed. "Attempted to halt plague. Failed. Containment breached. Intelligent vampires disabled generators. Killed everyone." He inhaled. "Number of vampires unknown. Number of zombies unknown. Situation..." He turned. "Poor."

And as soon as he said that, there was a low grumble. A high-pitched hiss, accompanied by tapping nails against metal, and said metal _groaning_ as it was impaled. "Vampires gain additional abilities." Mordin said. "Higher stamina. Greater agility. Can crush metal."

Both of them froze as soon as the sound of a vampire crawling on buildings echoed again, this time much, much louder. **_"URRYYYYYYYYYY!"_**

"Devour blood through fingers. Vorcha vampires killable with heat-rounds." He nodded at Shepard. "Hope you have incendiary."

Shepard didn't have time to respond as Mordin raised a pistol and fired five times into the darkness. The first shot revealed one vampire as he was beaned in the head. His body was lit aflame, before a second one behind him let out a shuddering cackle. Second shot revealed three, with one batarian and two vorchas. Third shot, five, with two humans. Fourth shot, ten, all of different races.

Fifth shot, the wall was crawling with vampires. Shepard's eyes widened. "You know," She swallowed. "My family has a technique for situations like these."

Mordin reloaded his pistol. "Technique might help. What kind?"

"Well, simple." Shepard grabbed his wrist, before she stomped the ground, and turned tail. _"Run!"_

 **[SHEPARD'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE]**

In another part of town, a batarian smoked a cigarette. He flicked the butt of the cigarette several times, before he heard stomping. Two footsteps from humans, one from a turian, and one from what sounded like a walking freight train. And last he checked, there weren't any krogans nearby. He paused and looked up from his place by the car. He stuffed the cigarette into his mouth and raised his battle rifle in preparation.

One puff. He saw the heads of two human mercenaries. Two puffs, the turian was right behind in a helmet and dressed in blue. The batarian's four eyes widened, as it became abundantly clear that this turian was Archangel. He fired a shot, then a second and a third.

However, he failed to account for the fourth person. The batarian shot once, and missed Archangel completely. The shot continued flying past the wall, bounced haphazardly off of concrete and beaned a krogan across his headplates as soon as he came into view. The shot shattered into pieces on impact, scratching the plate and causing the krogan to jerk his head to the side.

The barrel of the gun let out a sizzle, as the batarian's eyes widened in shock, then terror. The krogan came to a stop, and let out a roar. **_"WHO JUST SHOT ME!?"  
_**  
The batarian mercenary let out a low whimper, before he started taking steps towards the car.

 _ **"I'M GOING TO RIP OFF YOUR HEAD AND SHIT DOWN YOUR NECK!"**_ The Krogan rounded the corner, stomped towards the car, and raised his shotgun. The car didn't even get far off the ground before a claymore blast blew apart the eezo engine. The entire thing slammed into the ground, before the krogan slammed it into a nearby wall.

Meanwhile, Jacob, Miranda and Archangel all hid in a nearby alleyway. They slowly moved away from the commotion, Jacob and Miranda squeezed against a wall and Archangel swearing under his breath. "...That was close." Miranda said.

"I don't think his dad hugged him enough." Jacob said. "He's angry, even for a _krogan."  
_  
"I knew one krogan who had to kill his own dad. _He_ had a cooler head than this guy." Archangel shook his head. "Not an excuse." He looked around. "And, uh..." Archangel motioned towards the alley. "Anyone have an idea on how to get out of here?"

"Other than move through the alley, no." Jacob whispered back. "We still need to find transportation back to the dock."

"That part shouldn't be a problem." Miranda answered. "We can get extraction as soon as we get further from the..." She paused as she looked at the map on her omnitool.. "...That's convenient."

"What?" Both Archangel and Jacob spoke at the same time.

"This is close to Shepard." Miranda said. "Only about two kilometers to the darkest part of Omega."

"That _is_ convenient." Archangel said back. "What's the catch?"

"Well, there's supposedly a plague." Jacob said. "But you have a helmet."

"Vacuum sealed. I can go to space in this." Archangel tapped his helmet.

"Good thing everyone's airtight." Jacob nodded, before they all started walking.

"What about the quarantine? How well do you think it's secured?"

"Well, Aria isn't completely incompetent, so it should be locked down tight. Security, sealed doors, the works." Archangel said. "So expect some resistance." He turned back. "You said that Shepard survived, right?"

"We did." Miranda said. "What, is she a friend?"

"Damn right, she's a friend." Archangel took out an assault rifle. "If I know her, she'll either figure out what's going and fix it, or she's going to burst out of the quarantine in a gigantic explosion."

[=]

"Running understandable. Plague looks incurable. Problem out of hand." Mordin let go and kept the pace. "...Never seen so many vampires in area."

"How the _hell_ did this happen?!" Shepard shouted, before she took her grenade launcher and fired once at the door. The explosion blew apart the bulkhead, and she decided to put that psychic power to good use again. The rest of the door was shredded apart and compressed by the eight hands, before she whipped the glowing ball around and shot it at the vampires.

The one in front got the brunt of the impact as his face and torso exploded into burning strands of flesh. The limbs were sent flying, before a second, third, fourth and fifth vampire were annihilated by a brief flash of light.

Meanwhile, Mordin sketched something on his omnitool. "Power station close by. Activate power. UV lights all over Omega."

"Why would there be _UV?"_ Shepard said back.

"UV provides healthy nutrients in good doses. It's powerful. Kills vampires on activation."

Shepard shook her head. _"Okay!_ We do that! Turn it on! Kill vampires. Save anyone left!"

"Speaking like me." Mordin said, before he pulled out a scalpel and sliced above her head. A vampire that had gotten too close screamed in agony as his throat exploded with light. "Keep moving!"

Overhead, the hooded man crouched. His vampire forces ran by, ignoring him in favor of their prey. He smirked, idly transmitting information in his mind as he observed. His teeth were bared briefly, revealing a set of perfect, smoothed fangs. His canines briefly sharpened before resuming their form, and his eyes flashed blue, with a series of wires and machinery just underneath, before he suppressed the appearance.

He stood up, a smirk stretching across his face. "Shepard..." He raised a hand, before his forearm crawled off of his arm and onto the wall. The thing scrambled across, fingers digging into the metal before it transformed into a clawed spidermonkey. It disappeared among the buildings and machinery, and just as soon as the vampire hordes began to peter out, he vanished into a cloud of locusts.

[=]

"So, uh, how did you meet Shepard, if this even _is_ Shepard?" Archangel asked as they reached a different marketplace. "I mean, last I checked, she vanished when the Normandy crashed." He casually dodged a customer.

"My company spent four billion credits to revive the dead." Miranda said. "I know. I was in charge of the whole thing." She kept away from the denser parts of the crowd, while still staying close enough to talk.

"I was basically there to shoot anyone if they looked like they were gonna threaten the workplace." Jacob added, before he smoothly dodged a completely different krogan.

" Security _and_ head of necromancy. Neat." Archangel nodded. "I do hope that means you can still handle a gun."

"I'm trained for SMGs and heavy pistols." Miranda said. "I can handle mostly small arms."

Archangel shrugged. "I always preferred bigger guns. Assault rifles. Sniper rifles."

"You know, given your past in C-sec, I would have thought that you preferred smaller arms."

"Huh. You did your research." The turian snapped his fingers. "Nice. Now I'm working with stalkers. I hope you aren't bullshitting me about Shepard."

"I'm hardly a stalker. I just like staying informed." Miranda shrugged.

"We can talk more about how creepy Miranda is later. Right now, don't we have a Commander to-" As though to cut him off, the entire city's lights began to flicker, before suddenly, everything was pitch-black. The emergency lights turned on, bathing everything in a deep, bloody red. "-I hope that's some kind of day-night cycle thing."

"Omega never sleeps." Archangel said as he pulled out his assault rifle. People began switching on their flashlights as screaming and muttering filled the air. "Someone cut the power to this part of the colony." And as soon as the words left his mouth, the emergency lights soon followed.

[=]

Shepard raised her gun. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Mordin asked, before they both rounded a corner and shut the door behind them. "Blast wall. Self-powered. Can withstand thermonuclear blasts." Just as he said that, there was a loud _bang._ Both he and Shepard turned to see a tiny dent in the wall. Followed by another. And _another._ "Cannot withstand vampires for too long."

"Okay, where's the power station?" Shepard asked. "Because that's _probably_ important."

"Around next corner." Mordin said, before he dashed forwards past another set of abandoned buildings. Just as he did, though, he froze. "...Problem."

Shepard dashed ahead to meet him and stopped just as soon as she saw what he did. There was a gigantic hole in the wall, still smoking from an explosion. Right where a generator was supposed to be, there was now a mess of destroyed machinery, and the wires were melted beyond repair. _"That's_ not good."

"More than problem. Plan is now obsolete. Need to escape immediately." He peered up. "Pyjack?"

Shepard looked after him, before she saw what he did. A tiny spider monkey, peering down at them from above. It blinked, watching curiously. "Monkey." Shepard said. "Earth creature. The hell is it doing here?"

It blinked, before it bared its fangs. Both Shepard and Mordin recoiled upon seeing rows upon rows of sharpened metal teeth, and only Shepard was fast enough with her shotgun. The slug blew apart its head and the perch it was on, revealing metal and _flesh._ The monkey's body began to cackle with a low, deep voice as it crawled down, the metal inside coalescing into a new object.

More specifically, it was turning itself into a live, blinking grenade. Shepard and Mordin began to run as quickly as they could in the other direction.

"What the hell is _that?!"_ Spittle flew out of her mouth. "Why is the monkey a _grenade?!"  
_  
"Run now! Questions later!" Just as he said that, the monkey dashed up a nearby wall, the head still missing, grenade still in its body. Shepard shot the wall in front of it with a combustion round, blowing a hole open and causing the monkey to crash and fall to the ground.

The grenade detonated on impact, blowing a hole in the ground and destroying the nearby wall. The building groaned as a support pillar was obliterated, causing it to crash into the building just across the street.

Shepard and Mordin kept dashing forwards, before Mordin nodded. "Impressive."

Dust covered the rest of the district as they ran off, opening a door locking it shut. Meanwhile, among the destruction, a lone man cast aside his hood. His face was shadowed, his expression mirthful. "Interesting." He said, before the remains of a scattered monkey began to form at his feet. The scraps of flesh and molten metal flowed into his left leg, before his hand rebuilt itself just as quickly as it had initially vanished.

 _"Very_ interesting."

[=]

Archangel watched down the street as people started clearing out to their own homes. Doors were forced open, while a few wondered where the emergency power had gone. He adjusted his HUD, switching to nightvision. "Nothing worth looking at. Just a bunch of mercs and goons."

Miranda switched her own vision. "Nothing of note on infrared."

"Got nothing on X-ray." Jacob said back. "Are you _sure_ this isn't a night-day-cycle thing?"

Archangel glared at him through his helmet. "People are screaming, crying and running. I think that answers your question."

Jacob shrugged. "A man can hope."

"Hope usually isn't delusional." Miranda said back.

Meanwhile, the mercenaries kept their guns up and weapons loaded as they all stood by. The doors of civilian homes slammed shut while an unlucky few stumbled around, trying to find a way to get off the street. The air was deathly quiet, nothing among the walls as everyone kept still. Suddenly, there was a loud shredding noise, followed by a loud gunshot and an exploding door.

Immediately, two people jumped out. One was a human woman, armed to the teeth with five different weapons over her distinct, purple N7 armor. Smoke trailed her as she dashed out, and aimed back, while the second person, a salarian, raised his hands. "Dr. Solus! She's with me!" He shouted. "Do not shoot! Not hostile! Being pursued!"

Archangel peered down his sights at the doctor and muttered. "Huh. He gave up on the plague." He looked further, before he paused. "Holy _shit."_

 _"Commander!"_ Jacob spoke into his comm. "What the hell happened?"

 _"Long story! No time! Gotta move!"_ She shouted back. "Where's the power? We kinda need the power back on! _Now!"_

"Well, yeah." Jacob shrugged. "I don't see what's worth panicking over, though." And it was then that they all turned back towards the door upon hearing another slamming noise. Behind the blown-out wall was a hastily sealed door, with manual locks in place to keep it closed. A single batarian moved closer to it while Shepard coughed into her hand.

"Yeah it's that." She said back. _"Something's_ been chasing us. We locked a few doors between it and us."

"Them, you mean?" Mordin walked over. "Power necessary. Where is the main station?"

"I haven't the foggiest."Archangel said, before he nodded towards Shepard. "So uh, good to see you again."

Shepard quirked up an eyebrow. "Same...wait, have we met?"

"Come on. Don't tell me you don't recognize my-" And again, the door slam echoed through the room. The guards raised their guns, before the doors exploded, followed immediately by a stream of monsters. A batarian guard fired a full clip into the crowd before he was impaled through the chest, while a human guard was ripped limb from limb as hundreds of vicious, hungry vampires tore her to pieces.

The turian's jaw dropped as soon as a gigantic explosion threw several of the vampires into the air, before Shepard tapped on his back.

 _"Okay,_ we move now!" Shepard turned, just before she used her spirit again. Eight arms stretched out as she decided to try launching something; eight scoops of red-hot steel were taken from the ground and slammed into a ball, with several hundred pounds of metal compressed into a tiny hand-sized sphere of glowing-hot death.

She moved in to have it punched. _**"ORA!"**_ One fist hit it, followed by seven others. There was a string of _**"ORA!"**_ while the ball was more and more deformed. A few punches solidified it, turning the ball into a tiny, glowing bullet, before the final strike sent the entire thing zooming forwards.

To the untrained eye, there was only a ball of metal and destroyed paneling, before a thunderous bang echoed into the chamber. Any soldiers who were left fighting the vampire hoard was knocked off-balance as the dense ball of metal screamed forwards, scorching the ground and stripping the ground of metal paneling.

Several vampires were hit head-first by the bullet. The top halves of their bodies were torn apart, while anyone fortunate enough to not be in the line of fire was sent sideways into nearby walls. The bullet kept moving forwards, unhindered by the progress of the vampire masses, before it hit the back wall and exploded in a spectacular blast of blue light. The destroyed doorway collapsed, sealing off the rest of the as anyone just about to enter was sent backwards by explosive power.

Shepard turned towards Solus, eyes wide, breath labored. "Okay how long do you think that'll hold them?"

Jacob and Miranda stared at Shepard, jaws slack, mouths wide. "How did you _do_ that?"

Archangel raised a finger, before he put it down, then up, then down again. "...Was I the only one that saw-"

"Ten minutes, tops." Mordin said. "Optimistic-"

"Give me the _honest_ answer."

He paused. "...Five."

"Okay! We're onto something." Shepard turned. "Anyone know how the hell we can get back to Aria?"

"Skycar." Mordin said.

"Or, alternatively, we go to the Normandy." Miranda moved in. "We need to go. _Now."  
_  
"There are still _people_ in this station!" Shepard shouted back. "Seven million! There's gotta be _something_ we can do."

"Take skycar. Reach main power. Reactivate if possible. Redistribute. Alternatively..." He turned. "Jettison area. Sacrifice one million to save six million others."

Shepard paused. She swallowed, letting the information process. "Last resort, Mordin." She raised a hand to her comm. "EDI, Joker, how quickly can you get us to the main part of Omega?"

"We can pick you up in three." Joker said. "Transport takes five."

"Please be sure that those-" She paused, taking several seconds to grasp the term. "-vampires are not in the same vicinity as the shuttle."

Mordin nodded over to Shepard. "Shouldn't be. Doors are thick enough to hold them off."

"Stand by for extraction." EDI said.

"Good." Shepard looked up. "Take Mordin and Archa-"

"Garrus." Archangel interrupted. "It's Garrus."

Shepard turned to him, wide-eyed. "...Wait, you've gotta be _kidding me."_

"Also, kind of rude to have me thrown back on the Normandy. I thought you were _dead."_ He popped the helmet off and showed a familiar turian face underneath. "How about we turn on the power, and catch up a little?"

Shepard stared at him again, before she shrugged and gripped his hand in a shake. "I can't fucking believe it. And like...Archangel-"

"Cool name, right?" Garrus said in a slightly smug tone.

"Yeah, let's go with that."

[=]

In a distant part of Omega, Aria stared at the blackened tower on her map. The room she sat in was dark, smokey, filled with krogan playing poker, turians playing games, and two asari women flirting with two different species. The dull thud of pounding club music could be heard echoing through the walls, but it was just that; a dull thud.

Aria herself sat in a booth in this private chamber, surrounded by her two best guards and two newbies that she felt like scaring. She looked up from the hologram and blew out a puff of smoke from her cigar. "Any idea on why a chunk of my fucking city went dark?"

"No idea, boss." Someone peered over her shoulder. "Shepard and her cronies went there..."

"Correlation, causation." Aria raised a finger. "I'm not stupid enough to pull that assumption."

"Well, plague."

"Last I checked, plagues don't cause blackouts." She said. "I don't like it."

"Maybe you got something wro-" She glared once at him, and the new turian guard simply shrunk in her gaze.

"Good. You're learning." She let out a ring that dissipated on contact with the ceiling. "Might need to send someone down. Check on the lower levels. The blackout's cut all my feeds too, so that's a no-go." She looked up. "Anyone willing to go or...?"

A batarian spoke up. "Actually, if the place is really in that bad a condition, it might be better off to eject it-"

Aria glared at him. "That's an absolute last resort."

"But it's got a section with a plague, and one million-"

"It's part of _my_ fucking city." She growled. "I am not giving up a chunk of _my_ Omega just because one asshole guard thinks it's okay." She turned to him. "This is _my fucking town."  
_  
He stared, before he shook his head and stood upright. "I still think we should cut our losses."

"And _I_ think we should let it play out." Aria said. "Keep talking, Garka. See what fucking happens."

He didn't say anything else as he stood upright. "Yes, ma'am."

[=]

Shepard leaped out of the Cerberus shuttle, followed quickly by a still-helmeted turian. She rolled onto the ground, while Garrus just landed, assault rifle at the ready. "Nice. I'm back and immediately, we're out to turn on the power."

"Hey, kind of urgent here." Shepard looked over her shoulder.

"I know. I mean it makes _sense_ that things are kind of urgent, but yeah." He sucked air in through his mandibles. "You were dead. I mean we all saw you get spaced." He raised a finger. "Gotta admire your death-faking skills."

"Not the fucking time." Shepard said back. "We need to get that generator up so that a few less people die." Shepard kept moving through as a voice echoed over the comm.

"Uh...Mordin wants to talk to you." Joker said, before Mordin popped up on Shepard's HUD.

"Shepard. Vampires are creating zombies. Ten minutes until section is a total loss." He inhaled. "Still recommending jettison."

"We have time." Shepard said. "Where's the plant?" She looked ahead, staring at the shifting machinery. Afterlife's music blared out from inside the club as she looked at the eezo-filled asteroid overhead.

"Actually, you're looking at it." Garrus pointed upwards, before he traced an index finger by a long, hanging cable straight to a large cylindrical building. "Any idea on what to do? I mean, you told me that the main powerlines _and_ the backup generator had been blown to hell."

"Yeah. By a monkey-grenade." Shepard said as she moved forwards. "Fuck. I think we might have to talk to Aria."

Garrus stared at her. "I really hope not."

"Something something, she's an arrogant bitch?"

"Yeaaaaaaah that's putting it nicely."

"Figures." Shepard glanced back at him. "I talked to her before going on the hunt for you and Mordin."

"At gunpoint?"

"It was at gunpoint."

Garrus let out a laugh. "You haven't changed." And with that, they moved. "So anyway, if you don't want to deal with Aria, we can make it around Afterlife to one of her safehouses."

"I don't want to kill her guards if we don't have to." Shepard said. "I mean..."

"Guards are guards." Garrus said. "Pay them off or scare the shit out of them. Saying 'hey, we have archangel' will usually make some of them shit their pants."

Shepard snickered. "Someone's building up a reputation."

"It happens."

[=]

In another part of Omega, the muscular, hooded man walked past the vampires. They kept clawing at the destroyed, melted doorway and a few collapsed buildings. They had done a decent job, with several feet of rubble already torn apart and moved, but he, personally, believed them to be too slow to do it within anyone's lifetime.

"Can a monkey truly do a man's work?" He asked the air as he walked by them, before he raised two hands and tore away his hood. He flexed his arms, thrust his chest forwards, and licked his lips as two bony blades extended from his palms, before metal ran down their length and twisted them into cannons.

The other side of the door exploded as a spray of molten metal blew through the door. Any guard unfortunate enough to be too close to the blast was burnt to cinders, and the remains of past vampires were left unable to regenerate under the heat.

The ultimate hybrid walked through the remains of past vampires, blood and destroyed flesh seeping into his body as he let out a light laugh. His hair flowed among the blackness. **_"BEHOLD!"_**

Vampires began to flood the streets of Omega as he kept walking through, before he plunged his hand into a Batarian forehead. The giant, muscular man absorbed him wholesale, the cells offering no resistance as bullets began to spray at him.

His skin hardened, shots glancing off of reaper alloy as he walked. _**"I. AM. YOUR. MASTER!"**_ He raised a leg, before jamming into the ground with the power of hamon. The metal split and melted at the impact, sending people into the air while burning them alive in their own suits.

The new light engulfed the street, giving him a dark red glow from beneath. His hand blades shined like a rainbow, and his hair lit up like the sun. "I. Am. **_KARS."_**

 **「** **KARS** **」** **  
** **「** **THE ULTIMATE HYBRID** **」**

[=]


	4. Chapter 4

Shepard dashed through the streets, past guards, past shops. She fired a pistol into the air, before she let out a scream. _"Coming through!"_ The sound of a gun firing wildly into the air immediately caught the crowd's attention and caused people to instinctively jump out of the way of the heavily-armored madwoman and her turian friend. "Million lives at stake! Gotta do shit!"

Garrus kept up with her as he nodded. "What she said." He ducked and weaved between people, while Shepard brought a hand to her ear.  
 _  
"Status!"  
_  
"Uncertain. Status of section unknown." Mordin said from on-board the Normandy. "Scans indicate no problems."

Garrus threw his hands up as he ran behind Shepard. _"Bullshit!"  
_  
"I know." In the lab, Mordin looked over the map of the ship. "Scans are mostly built without intention for combat against vampires. Functionality is easy to implement."

"You said ten minutes until that part of the station's overrun!"

"Worst-case scenario."

 _"What?!"_ Shepard shouted back. "Really? _Really?"  
_  
"Margin for error. Enforce urgency." He smirks. "You were urgent, were you not?"

"What's the actual estimate?"

"Unknown. Ten minutes is still close to proper guess. Will know that when re-fit of scan is..." Suddenly, in the lab, aboard a scanner, EDI spoke.

"Thank you for the data, Doctor. I am equipped to handle the rest." Suddenly, in front of him, the map of Omega's tower lit up like a Christmas tree. A million lights, representing a million people, floated among a gigantic cylinder, while he spoke. A red mass, surrounded by a grey blob, pulsed at the center of Omega's tower. The grey was growing, and as he punched in the equations, he spoke.

"Section of city is almost total loss. recommend haste."

"What's the best case scenario?"

"Twelve." He said. "Twelve minutes."

 **[SHEPARD'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE]**

Joker kept the Normandy floating close to Omega's towers, her crew watching intently through several different screens as Joker kept the ship drifting close by. "Maintaining speed with Omega," he said as debris was deflected by the mass effect field. "Still got that read?"

"Still have good scan." Mordin said back over a comm. "Ship is well-equipped. Very useful. Can see self working well here."

"Glad to hear it." Joker said again, before EDI popped up beside him.

"I've detected a large heat signature inside of Omega."

"How big are we talking?" Joker asked, before he saw a flash of light, followed by a spray of debris. Molten metal spilled into space, along with the pieces of innocent victims. Several vampires were spaced, and they were immediately vaporized as soon as they came into contact with the rays of Omega's sun.

"Jesus _christ!"_

Joker boosted the Normandy backwards, taking care to avoid the new debris field as pieces of the station were sent flying at bullet speeds. One piece of debris was deflected by the kinetic field barrier, while another pierced through and glanced off of the armor.

"A large sized explosion. No obvious cause could be discerned." EDI said.

"Yeah, no kidding?" He glared at the blue ball. "Half a billion credits."

"I can employ hyperbole, if you like."

Joker rolled his eyes, before he raised a comm to Shepard. "Okay, are you _sure_ that anyone can be saved?"

[=]

 _"Bet on it!"_ Shepard said as she kept charging towards a power station. Without hesitation, she pulled up the shotgun, switched the gun's modes, and pressed it against the lock. The door's locking system exploded, before she _pulled_ the left door open.

"Okay, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say things are _bad._ Even worse than the doctor's supposed 'best case scenario' _."_ Garrus went to the other side and pulled his half of the door. "Any idea what the hell we're going to do?"

"We turn on the power." Shepard said. "There's gotta be _something_ we can do." A few salarian workers could be heard running down the hall. "Like, maybe a switch or..."

Garrus grunted as he finally got the door open. "We might have to jettison, you know." He said between breaths.

"We _might."_ Shepard dashed through the now-open doorway as the sound of a humming eezo engine echoed throughout the building. "That doesn't mean it'll have to happen."

Garrus caught up without effort. "Then what if we can't?"

 _"What if we can?"_ Shepard ran through the halls, before eventually she rounded a corner into a nearby office and reached a console. "Okay! Found something..." She looked over the controls. "Shit... _shit."_ The system leading to the tower was blackened on the console's display, showing nothing but a warning about destroyed wires. "Shit." She raised a hand to her comm. "Mordin! How long until it's overrun now?"

"Five minutes." He said back. "Explosions. Debris flying from section of Omega. Situation deteriorating at steady pace."

"Garrus, can you fix it?" Shepard asked.

He looked between her, then the console. "We saw that generator and wire back in the city. I don't think we can."

"We can _try."_ She said. "I'm not giving up on the _survivors."_

[=]

"Aria!" A turian woman burst into the room. "Shepard just took over a power station!"

"How the fuck..." Aria sat upright. "Where the hell is the security?"

"They went down to investigate the dark spot on the station." She said, before Aria threw her hands into the air.

"Fucking hell. Okay, so any reason why she's doing that?" Her answer came in the form of flickering lights, as Afterlife's music stopped for a second before immediately resuming. "...Oh for the love of-" She raised her arms. "Okay! We're going to go get that bitch. She's fucking with _my_ colony."

[=]

Garrus pulled a wire out from underneath the machinery, swore loudly, and then dove back underneath. There was a brief, loud spark that burnt his glove, causing jump up and hit the back of his head against the underside of the console. He groaned, "Think there's a better solution?"

"I hope." Shepard said. "...EDI?"

"Thanks to your proximity to the power station, I can see how far the power runs." She scanned. "...There is nothing on Omega that can link to where the generators once were."

"There's got to be _something_ we can do." Shepard said. "We can't just-!"

A second later, there was another loud sparking sound. "There. Full control of the station, no password required." He stared. "...That's not good."

A red blinking light shined in front of them. The message blinked, with the words "Maintenance required" flickering over a darkened part of Omega. Shepard shut her eyes. "...how long do we have, Mordin?"

"Two minutes." He said. "Turian took five to repair systems."

"Five pointless minutes." Shepard said as she stared. She buried her face in her hands, staring at the lights for several good, long minutes. "I've been awake for less than a _week."_ She muttered as the light kept blinking in front of her.

"Shepard..." Garrus murmured, before she stood upright.

"Kill few to save the many." She said, quietly. "Eject it." Shepard said. "Can we do it from here?"

"I am programmed to counterhack potential reaper infection." EDI said. "Ejecting isn't a problem." There was a pause in the air, as a pregnant silence permeated the room. "Are you sure, commander?"

"We don't have a choice." Shepard's head was bowed, teeth clenched before she looked back up at the display. "I wasted time trying to save this."

Garrus stood behind her, watching as her fist tightened.

"It's a total loss."

"Acknowledged."

[=]

There was a loud _bang,_ one that echoed through Omega as several explosive bolts were immediately detonated. A cylinder, several kilometers long, was ejected, the entire thing slowly drifting away as a mass effect field sent it away, with pieces of debris floating as soon as it detached. People, uninfected, were left to drift in the void, as vampires and zombies that were unfortunate enough to be close to the ejection zone were vaporized by the nearby star's rays.

Joker stared in awe as the entire thing floated downwards, before eventually leaving the Omega safe zone. Immediately, the unpowered mass was slammed in the side by a wayward asteroid, cracking the entire structure in half.

Mordin inhaled. "Good call made. Station was unrecoverable."

"I don't want to hear it." Shepard said on the other end.

"Well...you still saved a lot of people." Joker interjected.

"I _don't. Want. To hear it."_ Shepard glared at nobody. "Call for extraction. We're leaving."

Suddenly, there was a sound of locking guns and clicking weaponry. Shepard's head perked up slightly, as the person behind her began to speak. "I don't fucking think so."

Shepard glanced over her shoulder as the asari behind her held a gun to her head. "Mind explaining _what the fuck you did to my station?"  
_  
Shepard didn't respond for several seconds. "We need to go."

Garrus glanced between her, then Aria, then the gun, then the other guards in the room. "Yeah, I don't see that happening."

"Of course not." Aria said. "I felt that ejection from _here."_ She grimaced. "So what the fuck did you think was a big enough deal to kill a _million people?"  
_  
"An infection." Shepard said. "If I didn't do it, the rest of the station would have been overrun. There wasn't a choice."

"I don't know, you seemed awfully eager to do it." Aria's finger rested against the trigger. "So again, _tell me or else I'll blow your fucking brains-"_ She was cut off when a blue hand sliced away the front half of her gun. A burning ball of metal, once connected to the rest of the weapon, floated in the air, as Shepard jumped back.

Aria's eyes widened before immediately, a yellow figure emerged from her back. The figure was spindly, with gigantic, torso-sized yellow hands and a gaunt, empty face. The figure glared at Shepard as Aria jumped to the side.

On instinct, Garrus lobbed a flashbang underhand and covered his eyes. Anyone unprepared jumped backwards in surprise before their vision was engulfed in white, and their hearing was reduced to a loud ringing sound. Shepard's HUD blacked out as soon as the explosion happened, keeping one eye from behind blinded and one ear from being deafened as she brought out her eight-armed spirit.

"You have a _Stand?!"_ Aria shouted. "For fuck's _sake!"  
_  
"What the fuck is a-" Shepard was interrupted when an arm grabbed her face and _threw_ her into a nearby wall. Her Stand instinctively destroyed the wall behind her, shredding everything into tiny, glowing metal shards, as the momentum kept her barreling backwards. She went through several buildings, her speed kept steady by the lack of nearby walls. Her Stand kept gathering material, before she hit the ground _hard,_ rolling through tables, patrons and chairs before slamming against a bar.

She groaned in pain and stood up, the spirit behind her keeping its shape as another figure emerged. Two hand-shaped prints appeared in the ground as soon as Aria jumped through the same holes. "You have a fucking _stand."  
_  
"That's what this evil spirit thing's called?" Shepard asked as she coughed. Behind her, her Stand's eight arms waved and jammed the debris into a ball. She raised her assault rifle, and kept it trained to Aria as her Stand formed a tiny ball, and anyone that was still in room dashed out.

"It's hardly evil." Aria said. "But that doesn't matter _now,_ does it?" She bared her teeth. "So do you want to die or what?"

"I'd rather not." Shepard muttered. _"We need extraction! Now!"  
_  
"Run like a coward. Brilliant." Aria sneered. "I'll just make sure you're dead before a shuttle can even _hope_ to get to you."

They glared at each other, Shepard's Stand holding a condensed, glowing ball before dropping it to the floor. The molten metal almost exploded into a puddle as it melted into the floor, as they slowly circled the glimmering dance floor. "Really. Fighting in your own bar?" Shepard coughed.

"Yes." Aria flicked a hand, letting it glow with biotic power. "Like it even fucking matters. I can just clean up your blood when I'm done. Hell, who knows? It might even be _fun."_

Shepard made the first move. With a loud scream of _**"ORAORAORAORA!"**_ , her Stand launched the tiny metal ball at Aria.

Aria's Stand reacted, appearing with a loud _**"GATCHAN!"**_ before deflecting the shot into a nearby wall. Immediately, the entire thing caved on impact, metal denting and warping around the new hole in the wall. The Stand's hands simmered at the impact, before retreating back into Aria's body. "So you've got a mid-range combat Stand."

"I still have no idea what the hell your words mean." Shepard said back, before Aria began to charge forwards. Her stand's hands slammed the wall behind her, sending her leaping forwards to meet Shepard head-on. She _punched_ the spectre in the face, sending her head reeling to the side before Shepard's Stand ripped apart the bar behind her and threw the tiny ball straight to Aria's Stand.

A hand batted it out of the air as the ball burst through the ceiling, shredding even more metal and destroying several electronic displays before crashing into the crater above. Debris sprayed out of the newly made crater as Shepard kept firing an assault rifle at Aria. _ **"GATCHAGATCHAGATCHAGATCHA!"**_ Dozens of bullets impacted ethereal flesh as Aria jumped back into the air, and as Shepard swapped clips, the Stand opened its hands and let the tiny pellets hit the ground.

"I don't know why you're still trying this." Aria muttered as she hit a railing, before a combustion round detonated the rail she was holding onto. The beam melted, but not before Aria's Stand ripped a chunk of the safety rail off and threw it at Shepard.

Shepard's Stand scooped the rail into hand-sized-chunks, before flicking another condensed ball straight towards her. Aria's stand deflected this attack as well, leaving Aria wide-open as Shepard quickly pulled a full-sized grenade launcher off of her back.

Aria's eyes widened as Shepard fired, raising both her hands and her Stand's hands to block. The initial projectile bounced off of the giant yellow hands, but the ensuing explosion was too much to stop. Both Aria and her Stand were blown backwards as soon as the grenade detonated, melting paneling and sending anything that wasn't bolted down into the air. Aria hit the wall _hard,_ metal denting on impact as Shepard raised a hand to her comm.

"Joker! Extraction! _Now!"_ She turned back. "I knocked out queen bitch over here, but she's gonna come to in a second!"

"The shuttle's like thirty seconds out!" He said. "Where the hell are you?"

"If you see a building with a partially molten roof?" Shepard looked up to see metal dripping down from what was left of the ceiling's supports. "Yeah."

"Oh wow, that's hard to miss. Yeah, coming." He paused for a moment on the other end. "Hey, where's Garrus?"

"Here." Shepard turned to see Garrus stepping through a nearby hole in the wall. "Sorry, I wasn't able to take Air-Shepard." He looked at Aria, then at Shepard. "She called that spirits-y thing you had a 'Stand'." He muttered. "Any idea what that means?"

"I have no idea." Shepard said. "Do you?"

"Not the foggiest." He replied. "Though there's something to be said about spirits." He looked back to her. "I just never thought I'd see one with my own two eyes." Idly, he waved the gun over in Aria's direction. "Also, should we kill her?" Garrus said. "I mean you kind of pissed her off."

"No." Shepard said. "Aria runs Omega. Honestly, I think the place would be less stable without her." She swallowed. "There's been enough death today."

"Fair enough." Garrus said back, as a shuttle descended from the hole in the roof. "Hey, if you need to talk-"

"Later, Garrus." She said back as she rubbed her temple and slumped back in her seat. "Today's been a bit longer than I'd have liked." She stared up at the ceiling and took a deep, long breath as the Kodiak flew into the Normandy's cargo hold.

[=]

A man sat in his chamber, before he flicked a cigarette against a nearby ash tray. He tapped it against the side as he idly watched a star burn in front of him. A thought of mortality passed through his mind as he imagined the lifespan of a star compared to his own.

It wasn't as though he would ever see the end of this particular star. Even if it was near the end of its life, the man knew he would never live long enough to see it. Another thought, one about his role against the Reapers, passed through his mind, but this one was quickly quashed as he ground the butt of a cigarette into the ash tray.

He looked over his shoulder. "So Commander Shepard has finished recruiting Solus and Vakarian?" He asked over a comm.

"Yes, sir." Miranda said. "Omega has suffered heavy losses. Over a million jettisoned."

"Sacrifices have to be made sometimes." The man said. "Do feel free to patch her through for debriefing." He puffed a new cigarette. "Any opportunity to dive into the mind of a Joestar is worth taking."

"Noted. Thank you, sir." Miranda bowed before her image flickered out of existence.

[=]

In space, a chunk of Omega drifted further and further away. Hours into its impromptu flight, Omega and her sun were little more than tiny dots among the stars. And in his chambers, resting peacefully with his legs crossed and magnetized, was Kars. His skin had turned to metal, his eyes to gold and his hair to platinum as he sat, waiting intently.

And then from the shadows, undetectable by modern technology, came a flash. An enormous ship, one that dwarfed the parts of Omega that had just been jettisoned, appeared from FTL. Kars stood up and grinned at the ship as the shadow passed over his head. Bodies unfit for processing were sent into space, and those that were were starting to be processed and transferred.

Locust-like creatures were sent into the vacuum, propelled by tiny jets as they entered the ruined halves of Omega's tower. They went inside, as four-eyed monstrosity spilled out of the gigantic ship and drifted towards the halves.

Vampiric victims were carried into the vacuum of space and stored, as several hundred thousand human vampires were brought aboard. Kars himself crossed his arms before he jumped upwards. Metal boosters let him control is flight as they emerged from the soles of his feet, and his nervous system could be seen flickering beneath his skin as a display of his personal synthetic upgrades.

He grinned, as thoughts of power and intellect passed through his mind. He hit the surface of the passing ship, and began to walk towards an opening as more and more victims were mined out of the drifting husk.

Today had been very, _very_ productive.


	5. Chapter 5

Shepard's image formed in the darkness. She was dressed in Alliance fatigues, feet spread, arms behind her back. Military training came naturally, and the man could easily recognize it in her stance. Even if her eyes had bags underneath.

"You wanted a debrief?" She narrowed her eyes, jaw tightening.

At the other end of the blackened room, back to a dying star, a man sat in his chair, a glass of whiskey in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. A table raised itself to meet his glass as he put it down, before he spoke. "I admire your quick thinking, Shepard."

"Quick thinking still meant a million people had to die." Shepard said, not giving him a second to reply. "I don't think that's worthy of admiration." She kept her tone level as much as she could, but the end of her sentence was still somewhat forced.

The man didn't bat an eye. "It was the difference between one and seven. I'm glad you picked one." He swirled the whiskey around, before taking another sip. "Omega is a good stronghold in the Terminus systems and frankly, we can't afford to have it overrun by vampires."

"You actually buy the vampire story?" Shepard said. "All this crazy bullshit is just...I'm resurrected, I fight vampires, and I'm told that I have a...Stand. Thing." She shook her head. "It's a bit _much."_ The last word was even more forced than before, with emphasis on the last syllable.

"You already know what your Stand is?" The man asked.

Shepard blinked at the mentioning. "Uh..." She shook her head. "Eight armed. Kind of hindu-ish." Shepard pressed a hand into her temple. "I'm part Japanese and English. Why the fuck does my Stand look _hindu?"  
_  
"I wouldn't question it." The man said back. "Stands usually do come with names. You'll know it soon enough."

Shepard shrugged. "Sure." She inhaled again. "So who's next?"

"Someone in a prison ship." The man raised a hand, and immediately, a floating space station appeared on-hologram. "Someone named Jack."

 **[SHEPARD'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE]**

The comm cut out, and Shepard stumbled out of the room. "I'll never get over Quantum Entanglement." She muttered, before she raised her head. "Garrus?"

Standing against the doorway was indeed the Turian, arms crossed, mandibles tight. "How'd it go?"

Shepard's professionalism melted away as she slumped forwards and pressed her hand into her forehead. "I still feel like a piece of shit."

"Your back was against a wall and you didn't have a choice."

"That doesn't make it any better." Shepard said before she shook her head and took a deep breath. "We still have a criminal to free, right?"

"Yeah." He shrugged. "Well, any plan of attack? Like, maybe a break-in plan? EDI hacks security?"

"It would not be difficult." EDI piped up, before Shepard shook her head.

"I'd rather not have my ship practicing unsafe hacking." She said.

Garrus raised an eyebrow. "Wow."

"That wasn't what I meant." Shepard said, flatly. "You _know_ that."

"I know, but just... _wow."_ Garrus let out a chuckle. "I can't believe you didn't catch that, commander."

"For a turian, you're a fucking kid." Shepard muttered, before she looked over to the facility on the galaxy map. "We're still not going to hack into Purgatory. I don't see anything good coming out of it."

Mordin walked out of the laboratory. "Jack is a biotic. Powerful one. Interesting." He turned to Shepard. "Only been a day since Omega. Progress with mission is surprisingly fast."

"Well, I gotta gather resources." Shepard shrugged. "People first, everything else will follow." She turned to the image on the map screen. "Now for the more pressing question...what exactly will Purgatory hold?"

[=]

Shepard got her answer in the form of screams and clanging metal. The outside of the ship looked like an ark ship; a _space zoo_. The inside of Purgatory looked rugged, with scratch marks across the ground and rusted panels from overuse. Three guards stood by the main gate as Shepard, Garrus and Mordin stepped out.

Two turians stood as Shepard walked forwards, before the third, a human, raised a hand. "No weapons allowed on-board."

Shepard sneered. "Really? I'm not a prisoner."

"We still can't have weapons on board. Please give them to-" Before he said another word, Garrus yawned.

"Huh. Hero of the Citadel, killer of hundreds of Geth, killer of a _Reaper_ and you think a prison ship is going to stop her?"

The guard clenched his jaw. "Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Please give us your weapons."

"Well, I can give you one bullet." Shepard said. Immediately, she pulled a pistol off of her belt and jammed it against the poor man's helmet. The guard visibly froze as the two turian guards raised their assault rifles. "Guys, I have a shield. I'm a walking armory. I'm tired as hell and not in the fucking mood. Do you seriously think that shooting is going to _do anything_ other than just get you killed?"

"Our apologies." The warden said as the guards quietly put their guns aside. "The people here aren't used to...Spectre presence."

"Technically former." Shepard said. "I lost it when I apparently _fucking died."  
_  
"Not a bad trick, really." The man said before he pushed the guard out of the way and stretched a hand out. "Warden Kuril."

Shepard glanced down at the hand, before she just looked back at the turian. She simply put the gun back on her belt and glanced again. "Commander Josephine Shepard." She said back. "Don't try being civil, I just want Jack."

Kuril shrugged. "Whatever you say, ma'am." As he spoke, Jacob and Miranda walked out of the ship and stood by the doors. Miranda checked her pistol and her SMG, while Jacob just yawned and stretched his arms. "And who are these two?"

"Contingency plan." Shepard said. "Get me to the prisoner."

[=]

The place was a hellhole. Screaming echoed through the halls, guards beating prisoners, people slamming heads against walls. Shepard glanced at one guard as he merrily watched his friend beat a prisoner. Garrus winced at that, while Mordin stared at the man on the ground.

"Unethical. Immoral. Despicable. Cannot let continue." He said.

Shepard grimaced. "Why don't you just have them in stasis? Less chance of rebellion." Her off-hand popped the cap off of a thermal clip.

A turian guard turned to her. "These guys are the scum of the universe. We have to show them their place."

"I just see brutality." Shepard said back as she unscrewed the top of a grenade on her belt. "And you acting like moral superiority gives you a right to beat people half to death."

"It's just my job." He replied before he brushed her off and continued watching his partner slam the prisoner's head against a wall. Blood splattered onto the floor, and the corpse collapsed to the ground before the overwatching guard pressed his headset. "New quarters opened up."

Shepard growled, before she followed. "Just get the deal." She said. "We just need the deal."

"Well, he's not wrong." Garrus said. "What they're doing is barbaric, but they're still doing it to some pretty bad people-"

"It's not that cut and dry, Garrus." Shepard glanced back. " _Nothing_ is that black-and-white."

[=]

"This place is horrible." Miranda muttered. "Smells like-"

"Balls." Jacob answered for her.

"I was going to say 'death'." Miranda said back. "I mean, how many people died just being dragged here?"

A guard walked over, assault rifle in hands. "I don't think you want to continue this line of ques-"

"Balls fit better." Jacob interrupted him before he opened up a bottle of water and chugged. "Yes, I know what that sounds like."

"I was going to say." Miranda quirked an eyebrow up as she proceeded to sit on a crate of thermal clips. "Why does a prison ship need so much ammunition, anyway?"

The guard waved a hand. "Well, some of our prisoners are the most dangerous in the gala-"

"Beats the hell out of me." Jacob said again. The guard grew visibly flustered behind his helmet. "I mean it's not like they're _armed."  
_  
"Some of our prisoners are very potent bioti-"

Miranda intentionally raised her voice. "It's all very, very brutal. It's like they're running an-"

"-extortion racket?" Jacob answered.

"Yes!" Miranda said. "Thank you, I was about to sa-"

 _"For the love of god, just let me talk for one second!"_ The guard screamed.

Both Miranda and Jacob stared at him for several good seconds. Finally, Jacob opened his mouth. "...Rude."

[=]

Another door opened, and a technician glanced over at Shepard, before motioning towards the room at the far end of the hall. She shrugged and walked forwards. The technician didn't bat an eye as she walked towards the room, and just as her team reached it, the speaker echoed.

"Sorry, Shepard."

The door opened, revealing an empty room. Garrus let out a long, loud sigh. "Really?"

"You're worth more to us as a prisoner than a patron." Kuril said from over the intercom. "It's just how things work around here."

"Decision making poor. Life expectancy, suddenly shortened." Mordin grinned to the camera.

"Are you kidding me?" Shepard grumbled. "I mean, it's bad enough that you're turning this into a space concentration camp."

"The other door in this room's been sealed. The technician here is there to lo-" He was interrupted as Shepard yanked a grenade launcher off of her back and fired.

The technician didn't have time to scream before the explosion vaporized flesh and sent pieces of metal flying everywhere. The door itself exploded outwards, the hard steel melting as Shepard put the weapon back onto her back and whipped out a shielded LMG. "The technician is there to _what?"_ Shepard shouted. "I didn't quite _catch that!"  
_  
Kuril's eyes widened as Shepard escaped out the newly-made hole. He tore his eyes away from the screen, grabbed the microphone to his mandibles and screamed. **_"GUARDS!"_**

[=]

Miranda looked up as soon as an alarm started blaring. "Oh thank god." She said, before she tore the gun out of the guard's hands and bashed him in the face with it. Jacob followed up with his own biotic power, electrocuting one man before pulling him overhead for a punch to the stomach.

"That didn't last long!"

"I was hoping it wouldn't." She said. "Hopefully, there should be something to use to open up all the doors."

"I am still here to render assistance." EDI said, before Miranda just pressed a few buttons on her omnitool.

"Not now. We should be fine."

[=]

Shepard ran to another locked door, but instead of just blowing it open she decided to give something else a try. Her Stand appeared and shredded the door completely, hands scooping it apart before punching the hyper-dense ball across the floor.

A man unfortunate enough to be right in front of a holographic maximum-security console turned around just in time to have his midsection blown out by the force. The ball obliterated his innards, destroyed the glass behind him, and landed on the ground in front of Jack's cryo-cell with a loud _thud_. Shepard kept moving, shoving him out of the way by the shoulder before tapping the holographic console. "Okay...gotta do something...and..." She smirked.

"Freeing not recommended." Mordin said as he walked over to Shepard. "System going haywire. Station might go down if Jack is unleashed."

"Yeah, not much choice." Shepard said as she clicked a few buttons. "Worst case scenario, _another_ station's going down in flames." She pressed "enter".

With that, the cryo-chamber holding Jack opened, and the restraints popped out. Ice-cold fog leaked onto the ground as a bald, heavily-tattooed woman dressed in pants and leather straps fell to the ground. She coughed, the rough sound echoing through the halls as she glanced up. _"Fuck."  
_  
In front of her, three Ymir mechs were dropped from the ceiling, two of them ready, the third still unfolding itself as the sound of "ALERT, SUBJECT ZERO ESCAPING" echoed in the room.

She stood up, thrust her hips out and crossed her arms as she let out a menacing aura, before a pink ballerina with a clown's mask rose out of her back. She stretched her arms out, and, to Shepard's shock, she stood up on her tippy-toes. She did a triple-pirouette, biotic powers stretching from her arms before a gigantic shockwave annihilated the mech in front, heavily damaged the second, and sent the third tumbling backwards into the wall.

 _"TINY DANCER!"_ Jack roared like it was a battle cry, before she did a soaring leap into the air and kept moving with perfect precision. First movement, and biotic power caused the entire room to begin levitating. Second movement, a wall was blown out. Third movement, a guard was splattered against the wall, his limbs exploding as this monstrosity against science escaped through the power of ballet.

Shepard stared at the room below from the now-heavily damaged control room, jaw to the floor, eyes wide, before she shook her head. "...What."

Garrus shrugged. "I concur."

[=]

Jacob sat on a pile of three men, resting his chin on an open palm. He yawned loudly, and just as soon as another guard popped in, he fired. A shotgun blast tore through his shield, before Miranda warped his exposed body. The guard collapsed inside his own armor, arms falling to the ground before the head followed, before immediately bouncing off the neck of the now-useless armor.

Miranda followed his example. "Any word from Shepard on your end?"

"No." Jacob looked up. "You?"

"No." Miranda said back. "She isn't one for planning."

"Her plan for dealing with Sovereign was running a truck through an ancient magic relay portal and magna-booting up the side of the building, right?"

"And then she killed Saren twice over, which caused Sovereign to drop his shield." Miranda turned. "You remembered."

"You didn't shut up about it afterwards." Jacob said flatly, before a loud _thud_ echoed on the other side of the door, followed by a YMIR mech's booming voice. "POWER UP, INITIATED".

Both Miranda and Jacob stared at the door for several seconds, before they slowly turned towards each other. They spoke in unison. "...Back to the ship."

[=]

Shepard followed closely behind the widening trail of destruction left by Jack's Elton John rampage, taking care to clothesline some guards and shoot others, just to make sure they wouldn't get back up and try some funny business.

Oh, and Garrus shot them again, just to make sure. "Okay, so what we're after in this place is basically a dancing ballerina force of destruction?"

"Apparently!" Shepard shouted back.

"An unexpected turn of events!" Mordin said. "Quite exciting! Would love to examine later!"

"Yeah, right now, I'd rather we just take care of the dancing whirlwind of doom and death first and _then_ we can talk about examining her and all that shit." Shepard charged into a nearby room. "Good christ, this _never_ happened with Sare- _"_ She was cut off when the wall behind her suddenly cracked, and metal paneling bent at the sudden application of force from the other side of the wall.

Garrus raised a hand. "...Okay, thought. We might wanna put on our helmets."

"Seconding." Mordin said before he pulled a helmet off of a salarian corpse. "Would not be a bad plan."

Shepard nodded, before she tapped something on her collar and let her helmet fold itself over her head.

[=]

Jack performed a spinning jump towards a nearby wall, eyes shut, concentration pure, before she stomped, her stance resuming perfect form. The hull was immediately breached, sucking air out of the room as the Eezo cores that gave the station gravity started to violently malfunction.

She peeled a helmet and a chestpiece off of a dead guard, her body currently surrounded by a biotic field, before she popped both pieces on. She breathed in normally, before turning straight ahead.

"Where the _fuck_ is that warden _fuck."_ She growled, before suddenly, she felt footsteps behind her through the ground. She widened her stance, before she inhaled deeply, and slowly resumed a ballerina's pose. She pirouetted, meeting her pursuers.

A human, a turian, and a salarian stood by. One had a very large set of weaponry on her back, one had a sniper rifle and an assault rifle, and one had a pistol and a glowing scalpel.

"Oh my god it's a fucking freakshow."

"And you use a dancing ballerina Stand." Shepard said. "I don't think you're in a position to call _anyone_ a 'freak'."

Jack stared at the human in front, before she growled. "And who are _you?"  
_  
"Shepard." She said. "Commander Josephine Shepard. And right now, I'm looking for two things. Jack, and Warden Kur...Kurry...fuckface."

"Warden Fuckface is kind of fitting." Jack snickered. "Do you mean that turian-looking motherfucker?"

"Yes, I think she does mean that turian-looking motherfucker." Garrus stepped forwards. "Garrus Vakarian."

Jack snorted. "Okay, Harry."

 _"Garrus."_

 _"Harry."_ Jack glared through her helmet. "I hope you want to kill him."

"Not part of the plan, but uh...he's not exactly on my good side right now." Shepard muttered. "Anyway, what's two Stand users to do?"

"You know what a _Stand_ is?" Jack blinked.

"Yeah. I got one a few days ago." Shepard's Stand appeared behind her, eight arms spread before she bent her hips outwards.

Jack narrowed her eyes. "Name?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, they typically come with names." Jack said. "If you didn't figure yours out yet, you've got some fuckin' problems."

"I _just got it_ a few days ago." Shepard said. "If there's a name, I haven't figured it out yet."

"Eh, whatever. Just hope it's not 'Rocket Man' or something stupid like that." Jack waved a hand as she walked forwards. "You comin' or not?"

Shepard shrugged, before she followed Jack.

[=]

The Normandy detached itself from the rapidly disintegrating Purgatory, settling into a close but safe position to watch the continuing disaster. Bodies floated silently in the vacuum, some even bouncing off of the ship's kinetic barrier as the crew on the bridge kept watch of the ground team. Miranda kept a cup of coffee by her side as she watched from the bridge, while Jacob sat by Joker's chair.

"How many inmates were even _on_ that thing?" Jacob asked.

"Beats the hell out of me." Joker said. "Like a thousand tops?"

"Four thousand, actually. Though the dossier mentioned that the place was overcrowding, so that means it's probably like three times that." Miranda muttered. "Really, this is a blessing. The conditions on this ship were not ideal."

"I get the feeling that this is going to be a regular thing." Jacob said. "Next thing we know, Shepard will blow up a planet by accident."

"Don't press our luck." Joker muttered. "She blew up a chunk of Virmire, she blew up a _Reaper,_ she blew up part of a _city,_ and now she's blowing up a prison." He turned to Jacob. "A planet is the next logical step."

[=]

Shepard, Garrus, Mordin and Jack stepped through a doorway. The room was already exposed to the vacuum of space by way of an enormous gash in the side of the room, with dead mercenaries littering the ground. At the other end, was Warden Kuril in a Blue Suns spacesuit, who glared at Jack, then pointed to Shepard. _"You!"_ He roared. "You _ruined everything!"  
_  
"Weren't you the one trying to back down on a deal?" Shepard asked. "Don't blame me for your mistakes."

"You could have just _cooperated!_ It would have made _everything easier!"_ He shouted, before he let a figure emerge from his back. A turian Stand, twice his size, floated behind him, covered in electric blue. The crest on the Stand's head stretched far, far back, bending into the base of his spine, and the body itself crackled with electricity. **_"E. L. O.!"  
_**  
 _"Why_ do you have a Stand?" Shepard shouted. "Like, did _everyone_ get a Stand while I was out?"

Kuril responded by taking his electric Stand and punching the floor. The floor paneling around him exploded into debris before electricty darted out from the site of impact. Any bodies still left on the ground were instantly cooked, while Shepard, Mordin, Garrus and Jack all jumped to avoid the shock.

The electricty kept moving, and eventually it reached the gravity core for their part of the station. The eezo core shorted out violently, causing a blue explosion that blasted another large hole in the ship and killed the gravity in that particular room. The station section started to drift aimlessly, and the still-jumping crew suddenly found their momentum impossible to control.

Shepard flew aimlessly through the air before a wayward piece of debris came sailing towards her head. She shredded it with her Stand and threw the resulting ball at Kuril, only for the tiny thing to be shocked and repelled a full meter in front of his Stand.

Meanwhile, Jack tried to take position in midair. "I can't _dance_ in Zero-G!" She shouted.

"Now you see, without context that would be really, really stupid." Garrus muttered, before he twisted his body and fired off a shot. The recoil sent him backwards while the shot glanced off of Kuril's helmet.

Mordin, meanwhile, slashed at the vacuum with his scalpel. A sudden ripple of light emerged from his body with each swing, causing him to stay still. He kept his breathing level, and when a piece of debris came shooting towards him, he sliced.

The panel was split in twain by his scalpel, the center melted away by an intense ripple. "Salarian hamon potent even in darkness. Exposed to vacuum of space." He smiled inside of his helmet. "Exposed to Osun's sun."

Kuril roared at him and tore a shield pylon out of the ground with his Stand. He shocked it, creating a gigantic shield ball before throwing it right at Mordin. The salarian didn't blink, before he pointed his scalpel at a precise location on the shield ball, and stabbed.

The shield was overcome by glowing yellow, before the overpowered ripple caused the shield to explode towards Kuril. The man was blown off of his feet by the warped electric covering, before Shepard pushed herself towards the pylon and let her Stand shred it to pieces.

The debris was condensed into a ball as Shepard fired towards Kuril with her assault rifle. The recoil slowed her movement while the Stand behind her kept punching the ball, condensing it further and further. _**"ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA!"**_ Finally, it punched the ball eight times in less than a second and sent it screaming straight towards Kuril.

The Stand dashed in front of Kuril in an attempt to shock the white-hot ball of death, but it wasn't enough. The ball shot through the Stand's chest, blowing a hole in Kuril's own chest, and then continued through the turian's skull. The warden's head was blown clean off of his shoulders, while the ball continued down through the floor of the station and into deep space. The corpse's momentum made it flop against the ground, while magnaboots kept it from floating away into deep space.

Jack crossed her arms. "Nice job, Shepard." She murmured. "Though it's _just_ because I couldn't do shit."

"Because you can't dance, right?"

"Fuck it, you want me to come with you. Not like you're dumb enough to stab me in the back." Jack turned. "My Stand boosts biotics to fuckstupid levels, but only if I can dance."

"Good thing we don't deal with zero-G that often." Shepard said. "I'm calling the Normandy for extraction. I'd rather not get spaced again." She clicked her omnitool. "Also...you were talking about how Stand names just come to you?"

"Yeah?" Jack asked.

"I think mine's called _**Bodhissattva."**_ She paused. "Why the hell is it Hindu, anyway?"

"Bodhissattva is a Buddhist term." Mordin said. "Not Hindu."

"Still raises questions." Shepard said back.

Just as she said that, the Normandy came into view. Jack's eyes widened in shock as soon as she saw Cerberus' logo on the side, before her jaw clenched and her teeth ground against each other. She glanced at Shepard, who hailed the crew, before turning to Garrus, who was just casually enjoying his time in deep space. He had even found a comfortable piece of rubble to lay on while the Normandy brought a shuttle out to retrieve them.

Jack shook her head, before muttering to herself. "...Fuck me."


	6. Chapter 6

"I got rescued by fucking _Cerberus!"_ Jack roared. "You're fucking _Cerberus!"  
_  
"Unfortunately, yeah." Shepard crossed her arms. "This is a Cerberus ship with a Cerberus crew. The exceptions are myself-"

"That's debatable." Miranda crossed her arms. "We _did_ help bring you back from the dead."

Shepard brushed it off. "Garrus, and Dr. Solus."

"As far as I know, you're a fucking Cerberus zombie on a _Cerberus ship."_ Jack slammed her hands into the meeting table. "And why the hell did you even fucking _free me?_ Didn't you do _enough?!"  
_  
"I need you for something stupid." Shepard said. "An impossible mission."

"Like I fucking care. I don't have a fucking _stake_ in this." She widened her stance, and her Stand appeared behind her. "I could just fucking kill you all _right now._ Take the ship, _everything."  
_  
Just as she said that, Miranda raised a hand glowing with biotics and a pistol while Jacob brought a shotgun up to eye level. Shepard, meanwhile, crossed her arms as her Stand appeared, eight arms crossed before it unfolded them. "If you wanted to intimidate me, you're about two years and a death too late." Shepard mirrored Jack's stance. "I just killed your Warden. I freed your ass. I died and all it did was _piss me off._ And to save six million people I had to kill _one million others."  
_  
Jack sneered. "Boo hoo. Do you want a fucking medal?"

"I want your _cooperation."_ Shepard snapped back. "And if I have to give you some fucking files? Good. If you want info on Cerberus? _Get in line because I want some, too._ And if I get any, I'll be sure to share."

"You realize you're making a deal with a criminal, right?" Miranda said.

"Cerberus is a _terrorist_ organization. Everyone on this _ship_ is technically a criminal." Shepard bared her teeth. "What's one more?"

Jack's eyes darted between the three, before she focused on Shepard. A second later, the eight-armed stand vanished back into Shepard's back. "You're really putting that away, huh?"

"The ship's a few days old. I'd rather not ruin it yet." Shepard narrowed her eyes. "But I'm putting it away because we can come to an agreement, Jack. Those are the options. We agree, and I give you free data on a pretty shit organization; or I send you out the airlock. Are we abundantly clear?"

Jack clenched her teeth, and both Jacob and Miranda kept their weapons ready. Several seconds passed as she kept her pose and let her Stand glow behind her. And then she inhaled, and her Stand was retracted into her body. "You win."

"Welcome aboard." Shepard said.

"Shut the fuck up." Jack muttered. "Give me the info. And it better be soon." She shoved Shepard out of the way, before hitting the elevator and opening the door. "I'm going somewhere dark."

"Go to storage." Shepard said. "They even have a terminal. I'll make sure you get access to Cerberus' data there."

Jack didn't reply, before she closed the doors behind her. Miranda and Jacob looked out of the meeting room, then back at Shepard.

"That went better than expected." Miranda muttered. "Definitely an enormous, immature brat, though."

"She's kind of a bitch." Jacob said.

"Yeah, well, she's a powerful one." Shepard muttered. "We need to keep moving. Who's next?"

"Well, next is a Krogan." Miranda popped up a map on her omnitool. "The system he's in is rather close by."

Shepard considered this for a moment, before she smiled. "I always did like the krogan."

 **[SHEPARD'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE]**

The shuttle screamed across the surface of a dead planet. Derelict spaceships, ruined buildings and gunfire echoed from below before the Kodiak passed overhead. Eventually, in a clearing, it slowed its descent and opened a door. Shepard, followed soon by Jack, Garrus, Miranda, Jacob and Mordin, dropped to the ground.

And the first thing Shepard noticed was a single, box-like shotgun laying next to the corpse of a krogan. She picked it up with a single hand, before she let out a loud whistle. "I didn't know they still made these."

"What, a giant gun?" Jack sneered.

"No. Claymores." Shepard popped open the casing and smirked when she saw that there was nothing inside the cooling chamber. "Human make. Krogan use. They tend to break the arms of anyone who isn't properly modded." To prove point, she shoved a thermal clip into the gun, pulled back the pump and fired at a nearby wall.

The white-hot shot obliterated the metal, flew straight through a table inside, and completely obliterated a fridge at the other end of the room. The table dissolved on impact, the floor underneath was reduced to shattered tiling, and the fridge's front doors fell into the powderized tiles.

The barrel of the gun smoked as she pulled back the pump and let the thermal clip drop out. She kept tabs on the charge of the shot, before she put the still-steaming cliip into an ammo pouch. "We might need this for later." She said to Jack. "Mind holding this?"

"Wait, what-" Jack didn't get to reply as Shepard shoved the gun into her arms. She almost fell over at the gun's weight.

"Thank you." Shepard gave her a genuine smile, before she raised a hand and pointed forwards. "Now let's find ourselves a Krogan."

Jack groaned, before she put it on her rear gun rack. "How the fuck does she _carry_ this?"

Garrus patted her on the back. "Shepard's got an unhealthy obsession with firearms." He said. "You get used to this after a while." He paused. "She also has a pretty sizable model ship collection."

Jack stared at him. "Wait, what the fu-"

[=]

The group kept moving through the nearby compound, and it became apparent that a violent fight had already happened. Bodies were strewn everywhere, some krogan, most human, as well as the occasional turian and salarian. Several of the corpses had their helmets bashed in by oversized debris, with gigantic dents in their craniums and bloodied visors, while others had whole chunks torn out of their bodies by gunfire, and yet others had been reduced to little more than red mist, still settling from combat.

The entire place was a graveyard, hideous even by the standards of Korlus. "Massive battle. Heavy casualties." Mordin slashed his scalpel across the ground, and watched as the ripple echoed across the surface. "No survivors in immediate vicinity."

"That krogan from earlier was from this kerfuffle, right?" Garrus asked.

"That's what I'd gather." Shepard muttered. Several walls had been outright blown out, and overhead cover had been reduced to swiss cheese, with dried blood on the walls behind. "How long ago do you think?"

"A day. Two tops." Miranda said back. "Nobody keeps precise tabs on Korlus' bodycount."

"Perfect for our Krogan warlord." Shepard said back. She walked by another krogan corpse, helmet removed, before wincing. "He doesn't have a headplate." She turned the corpse slightly. "Stabbed multiple times in the head." She propped the chin up. "In very specific places. The wounds are almost symmetrical.

Jacob winced. "Was it popped off?"

"Doesn't look like it." Garrus put a gloved hand near the wound. "There are usually tell-tale signs of plate-popping. There'd be a lot more blood around this area if it _was_ a plate-pop victim. This krogan was born without that headplate."

"Impressive." Mordin said. "Did not expect accurate summarization from turian. Possible doctor? Medical history?"

"Actually, I've just had to do that to a few krogan. Signs are kind of obvious, especially when they start _screaming._ It's kind of satisfying."

Everyone else stared at him in mild horror, before Jack shot him a thumbs up.

"Proooooooobably a bad sign." He said.

"Anyway," Jack crossed her arms. "Something, something, weird corpse. Where the fuck is the warlord? Can't we just glass this place and find out where he is in the rubble?"

Shepard clenched her jaw. "We don't even know if he's _alive_ at this point. And I'd rather not destroy everything here for no good reason."

"Does there even _need_ to be a reason?"

 _"Yes."_ Shepard said back. "There's got to be some reason to-" Just as she turned to step on an upwards ramp, an asari with a pistol ran into her. She was dressed in a labcoat. Shepard was loaded with an absurd amount of weaponry and full heavy armor.

The Asari bounced off of Shepard and fell flat on her back, right onto the ramp. She groaned in mild pain, before she noticed just who was standing in front of her. _"Shepard?"  
_  
"That's my name." Shepard said back. "And you are...?" She trailed off. "Oh right. You were that scientist. How the hell did you survive _Virmire?"  
_  
"Luck." She brushed herself off and scrambled to her feet. "Anyway, don't mind me. I was just trying to get the hell out of dodge." She tried passing Shepard, but instead ran face-first into an armored glove.

"Ah, no. Not yet." Shepard grabbed her by a shoulder and turned her. "Now, question. What happened here?"

"Krogan." She said back. "Some Blue Suns idiot wanted cloned krogan and hired Okeer to do the job. I was on Okeer's team, even hired to put in memories."

"Huh. What else?"

"Well, I did it, and I got a pretty good salary out of it. Six figures." She shot Shepard a cheesy smile. "Also, can you let go? I gotta get the hell out of here. And since you're here, that's now _doubly_ the case."

"Not yet. You still need to answer some questions." She looked up. "Where's Okeer _now?"  
_  
"He's at the top of the facility. Probably dead, too."

"Hm?"

"Before the Blue Suns got wiped out, they flooded his room with neurotoxin. All that's in there is his best clone and his corpse."

Shepard sighed. "Fuck. Is the clone at _least_ stable?"

"Can't say." She said. "Can I go now?"

Shepard furrowed her brow and let her shoulders go.

"Good." She said, before she ran off.

Garrus looked at Shepard, then at the fleeing Asari. "Should I shoot her?"

"No." Shepard sighed. "Not like she's going to go nuts again. Sovereign's been dead for a while. We can probably rule out indoctrination." She looked up at the storage facility at the top of the compound. "Let's keep moving."

[=]

For such a small place, the facility was peculiarly intricate. Aside from the hundred or so dead mercs, there were also dozens of dead krogan, all fully-armored. Through several hours of of tedious running, jumping and exploration, they eventually reached the facility's uppermost point.

And Jack almost fell over as soon as they reached it. "Holy _shit,_ could someone get this dead weight _off of me?"  
_  
"Not everyone has absurdly durable implants, Shepard." Garrus coughed into his fist. "I mean, spirits, do you _ever_ get tired?"

"I get tired of _complaining."_ Shepard turned to show bags under her eyes. "Where's everyone else?"

Miranda flopped onto the ground, as did Jacob. Mordin, however, jumped over them and clicked his heels together. "Doing well, commander!" He said back.

"Alright. We're gonna need our helmets. Then we grab the clone, maybe his corpse, and get back to the Normandy. We're getting _something_ out of this." Shepard set her gun's clips to "breach", and fired at the lock. The door's locking mechanism exploded out the other side of the door, before a second shot blew apart the sliding mechanism. The door fell to the ground, and she and team entered.

Six flashlights shined across the room, all searching. It was empty, almost eerily so. The toxic gas that killed Okeer wafted about, and Shepard waved a hand in front of her face. "Any sign of Okeer?"

"None." Garrus said. "Just got a bunch of notes."

Mordin raised one set. "Perfect krogan. Possibly attempting to clone?"

"I guess." Jack looked through. "The hell is this?" She raised an object.

Shepard moved behind her. "You found something?"

"Yeah." Jack turned. "I found this." In her hands, perfectly shaped and recently carved, was a mask made of stone, made specifically for krogan. Orange blood, now-dried, had been splattered onto it.

And as soon as Shepard saw it, her eyes widened. "Remember that, uh, dead Krogan? The one without a faceplate?"

And just as she spoke, the room began to rumble. A low voice echoed through the walls, and Shepard's blood ran cold.  
 **  
** _ **"URRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY."**_ ** _  
_**  
Shepard turned, Stand ready, gun raised, before the roof over their heads exploded. A black figure, dressed in krogan armor hit the ground hard. His teeth, already sharp, glimmered like razors in the darkness, and his head plate had a few cracks running their length, and Behind his back, a figure could be seen.

Everyone raised their weapons on instinct and Jack readied her biotics and her Stand.  
 _ **  
"SHEPARD."**_ He grinned. "I see you've already come to see my handiwork?"

"What the-" Shepard kept her gun raised. "The hell happened to _you?"  
_  
"Ascension." Okeer smiled. "I achieved in five minutes what would have taken me _years."_ He glanced back at the tank. "Of course, the drawbacks are _severe."_ His grin extended further. "My prototype. My perfect creation is made with the intention of using the masks _without_ any of the flaws."

"So the krogan on the ground. You stabbed their brains to try and...?"

"The masks work in mysterious ways." He said. "There are few on Tuchanka. Probably some on Thessia. More spread through the cosmos, set up for _us._ But by _who,_ I wonder?"

"You..." Shepard shook her head. "We're here to recruit you. For something dangerous. Stupid, even."

"I heard." He smiled. "And I am more than willing to help. On one condition." He turned. "I need a test. I need to learn more of my new state." He moved closer to Jacob. "And this one seems to provide the least to your crew."

Jacob stepped backwards, eyes widening as soon as he realized what the krogan wanted. "Uh, Shepard?"

Shepard furrowed her brow. "No. You _aren't_ going to eat a crew member of mine."

He opened a claw. "I wasn't asking."

"And I'm not requesting." Shepard raised her grenade launcher while her Stand spread its eight arms. "Get away from Jacob. _Now."  
_  
The Stand behind Okeer made itself fully visible; a krogan-like shape, heavily muscled and wearing garish, flamboyant violet. Instead of claws, it had human-like hands; and instead of teeth, it had an elongated beak. The eyes had been impaled with a spike, and reigns stretched overhead to the small of its back.  
 ** _  
"SUPERTRAMP!"_**

Shepard tore apart the ground with a twirl of her Stand's arms and compressed the metal into a tiny ball. Before she could punch it, Supertramp waved its arms and _ripped_ the stakes out of its eyes. _**"LOGICAL ATTACK!"**_

Bodhissatva dodged the stakes, before they plunged into the ground behind her. She tried to swipe at the chain, only for her hands to clang _hard_ against the metal.  
 _  
"They cannot break!"_ Okeer sneered. "They cannot wither! _YOU'RE TRAPPED, SHEPARD!"_ Supertramp tore the stake out of the ground to swipe it upwards. Bodhissatva deflected the weapon with a quick swipe of three arms, while everyone else fired on Okeer.

The rounds glanced off of Okeer's shields, and when they broke through after several seconds of sustained fire they tore through his armor and ripped his flesh. But as the bullets passed through his body, he charged towards Garrus. "Your gunfire is _useless!"_ He cackled as Garrus haphazardly dodged out of the way. "Useless, _useless, USELESS!"_ He moved as though he was teleporting, and jumped in front of Jack.

She leaped backwards in a ballerina pose and threw a gigantic biotic fist towards Okeer. The hit nailed him on the faceplate and sent the krogan vampire sailing back into a nearby wall. He bounced on impact and slammed into the ground with two feet planted, and dashed towards Miranda.

She jumped out of the way as the floor was shredded by his charge. The supports groaned, and the entire complex shook. Bolts were loosened, materials were shaken, and welding was stressed and damaged. Okeer's feet dragged across the ground after missing Miranda, and towards another wall he saw Mordin, keeping himself far, _far_ away from the action. Okeer stomped his foot against the ground after as Mordin slyly took a specific scalpel out of his bag and raised it in front of his face.

"A salarian with a _toothpick?"_ Okeer cackled before his Stand tore its stakes out of the ground. "That's _fantastic!"_ He swiped them towards Mordin, before the salarian simply batted them out of the way with two well-timed strikes of his scalpel. They kept traveling across towards Jack, who batted them out of the way with a biotic shove, and the momentum kept the weapon traveling in a gigantic circle straight towards Jacob.

One stake missed and shattered a window, while the other impaled him through the chest. Jacob screamed in pain as the stake dug itself in, but to his shock there wasn't a drop of blood, or even pierced skin. "Did...did I get stabbed by _nothing?"_ He sputtered in shock as he stumbled around. "I got fucking stabbed by _nothing!"_ He fell to his knees and let his arms fall to the ground.

And then a second later, he raised a shotgun haphazardly and fired it at Miranda. The recoil caused the gun to fly backwards and smack him in the head.

She deflected the shot with a swipe of her biotics. "The hell's gotten into you!?" She shouted before he cocked the gun, wiped off the blood from his fresh head wound, and fired again. Again, the hit glanced off of her barrier. "Friendly fire!"

"Mind-control." Shepard muttered, before the Supertramp tore the second Stake out and launched it to Bodhissatva again. Four hands batted the weapon downwards as Mordin nodded.

"Stand is powerful enough to be seen without hamon-assisted vision!" Mordin said. "Powerful vampire, better control of bloodlust. Perhaps because of krogan?"

"Less speculation! More _getting that stake out of Jacob!"_ Garrus shouted before he limped away from where he dodged Okeer and kicked a table over. He fired at the chain holding the stake in Jacob's chest.

The chain rippled with the impact, tearing it out of Jacob's chest. He was knocked off of his knees and sent flying into the air before slamming into the ground flat on his back. The man groaned in pain as Supertramp yanked the stake back into its hand.

Meanwhile, Bodhissatva spiraled around and shredded a part of the wall that was still standing. A few quick punches later and she formed a white-hot ball and pounded it with a loud, echoing **_"ORAORAORAORA!"_** towards Okeer.

The vampire himself headbutted the projectile, causing it to explode against his headplate in a spectacular shower of molten metal. "Not _dense enough!"_ He cackled, before he threw a table straight towards Shepard. Bodhissatva dashed in front of her before shredding the table, and Shepard answered by firing three grenades straight towards Okeer. Each shot sent debris and smoke flying, but all it did was shroud the krogan in smoke.

Garrus watched as Shepard kept firing and _firing,_ before he flicked a knife out of his pocket. Slyly, as she kept launching more and more grenades, he snuck around Okeer, behind a panting and off-balance Jack, and reached Mordin. "Hey, I have an idea."

"Not now." Mordin said. "Need to penetrate krogan hide."

"Actually, I have just the thing." Garrus smirked. "I actually know multiple ways to peel off that headplate."

"As do I. Still require getting close. Highly risky."

"I didn't mean with my damn hands." Garrus raised his sniper rifle. "I just shot that chain out of Jacob. I think I can do this."

Mordin stared at him, then the gun. "Shot unlikely. Sounds foolish."

"Shot 'unlikely' _this."_ Garrus raised his sniper rifle, aimed it towards Okeer, and _fired._ The hit bounced off of a thin strip on Okeer's headplate, causing blood to spill as the thing was knocked slightly loose.

He turned slowly towards Garrus. "Oh, _oh..._ that was almost _clever!"_ He cackled as Supertramp tore a stake out of the window and plunged it back into its right eye. It twirled the stake in its left hand and Okeer took the time to keep talking. "You really thought-"

He was interrupted when Jack slammed him aside with a biotic shove. He was embedded in the wall by the blow, and just as he snarled at her, a high-speed grenade exploded against his exposed underbelly.

He groaned. "You are becoming an _annoyance,_ Shepard!" He tore himself away from the rubble, before another precise rifleshot bounced off of a nearby wall and into the underside of his plate. This time, it entered his skull, bounced off of the bone and knocked the plate askew, sending orange blood cascading to the ground. "Oh, for the love of-" He turned to Garrus, and his Stand turned with him.

The turian's eyes widened before he wisely dodged out of the way of the now-rampaging krogan. His headplate rattled as he slammed into the wall, and as he turned, the strips of flesh that kept it to his forehead slowly repaired themselves. But not before a salarian doctor appeared by his side.

Mordin slipped a hand under the plate and tore it off, the weakened flesh making it absurdly easy to open. There was a flash of light as his scalpel dragged itself across the now-exposed forehead. A split second later, and the krogan's head exploded radiantly as he let out a loud, agonized scream. His face burned, his eyeballs were scorched in their sockets, as he turned towards his audience.

Supertramp tore its stakes out, as the man began ranting. "YOU DIDN'T KILL ME!" He shouted. _**"YOU CANNOT KILL ME!"**_ Light and smoke rose out of his mouth as the hole in his brain kept smoking and burning. _**"I. AM. THE ULTIMATE."**_ He charged forwards, and his Stand twirled its stakes wildly.

 ** _"KROGAN-!"  
_**  
Just as he spoke again, Mordin slipped underneath the twirling blades of death and jammed another scalpel into the krogan warlord. He screamed in agony as his brain burned again, and his shell collapsed as the flesh underneath burst into flame. The armor clanged against the ground, and Supertramp itself disintegrated into dust in the wind.

"Target neutralized." Mordin let out a long sigh of relief. "Krogan vampire. Messy business."

Shepard let out her own sigh. "Check the area. I don't want another vampire." She looked at the krogan in the tank. Somehow, despite the chaos, the tank had only sustained a few glancing shots. A piece of debris was embedded in the console, but it was far enough from the machine itself that the clone remained undamaged. "Also...make sure to take the tank with us." She said. "I think we might get some use out of it."

"Noted." Miranda said as she caught her breath, before she walked towards Jacob. "Are you alright?"

"I got stabbed with _nothing."_ Jacob muttered as he picked himself off of the ground. "I feel like complete shit. Other than that, _fine!"  
_  
"Frankly, I'm just glad you're alive." Shepard said. "We'll get you checked when we're back on the Normandy."

"Thanks, Commander." He groaned.

"Commander!" Everyone turned to see Garrus by the door. "I think I found out what happened to the Blue Suns leader over here."

"Let's see it." She said back, before she patted Jacob on the shoulder and ran over to Garrus.

[=]

A few paces away, in a different control room in front of a console, was a human woman in a Blue Suns armor piece. She sat in her chair, her helmet still on her head, before Garrus turned the chair towards Shepard.

The body had been completely drained of blood, and the chest had been torn off to reveal emanciated flesh. Her organs were nothing but dried ruins, and the ribcage had been rid out to lie on the ground beneath the desk. Her eyes had deflated in their sockets, and a microphone had been jammed down her throat far enough to bulge out of her trachea, with bits of the mesh poking out between the cartilage disks.

"Okeer did not need testing." Mordin kept a clinical tone, but a grimace was clear on his face. "Already absorbed human blood."

"If she was turian, what do you think would have happened?" Garrus asked.

"If a zombie? Zombie would cease to function. A vampire?" Mordin turned. "Blood ejected. No damage."

Shepard winced. "That's a pretty bad way to go."

"Given the dossier, I'd say it was karma." Garrus said. "I mean, Blue Suns? And even among them she was known as a stone-cold, delusional bitch."

"Still pretty brutal." Shepard muttered. "Let's get back to the ship."

[=]

On Omega, Aria T'Loak pulled her hand out of a human corpse's skull. She flexed her fingers, before she shook her hand and let the blood fly off. She smiled at the woman's body, then looked at her pad.

A Cerberus logo flickered on its screen, before text scrolled down. "Have someone look at this." She turned to a batarian behind her. "We're finding that cunt."

"On it, boss."


	7. Chapter 7

The tank hummed in the cargo bay, and the krogan inside sat still. Shepard crossed her arms, dressed in her old Alliance fatigues. She let out a long, loud sigh as she paced around the room, tapped the glass, then walked around again.

"EDI, what are the risks of opening this on-board?"

"Possible fatalities, starting with the commander of the vessel and anyone on this floor."

"Would it be possible to vent the airlocks?"

"That would still cause possible fatalities, and one very angry krogan." EDI said. "I cannot, in good confidence, approve your decision."

Shepard tapped her chin. "How about I use my traditional weapon set?"

"That would result in a breach. As such, I would also advise against using high-explosive weaponry against a krogan while inside the ship."

"I thought the Normandy SR-2 was state-of-the-art." Shepard muttered.

"It is. However, the ship's hull is not indestructible." EDI said.

"So...what would you recommend?"

"I recommend that we keep it locked down and refrain from opening it at this particular time. Please keep note of-" She was interrupted when Shepard pressed a few buttons on the console. EDI sighed. "Nevermind."

"How bad can it be?" Shepard said as the door on the tank opened slowly. The krogan's eyes blinked as he slowly adjusted to the light, and his world exploded into color. He groaned, before he noticed the human standing in the middle of the room.

"Welcome to the Normandy. I am-"

He let out a loud roar before ramming her straight into a wall.

[=]

"Turns out he's kind of talkative for a krogan." Shepard muttered to the assembled group as they gathered in the meeting room. She was dressed only in her pants and a tank-top, with bandages laced with medigel wrapped around her midsection and chest. "Grunt, got anything to say?"

"No." He said, flatly. "I care little about describing my every detail. Just give me something to kill."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that's Grunt everyone. Say 'hi'."

Nobody dignified her with a response.

"Anyway, next mission." Just as Shepard spoke, Miranda raised a holographic map of a world orbiting a dying star. "We're going to the Far Rim. Descent will be done with a small, five-man team."

 **[SHEPARD'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE]**

"The landing site is a dead zone." Shepard said as she looked at a screen from inside the shuttle. "We're talking dead winds and possible geth. This place _is_ a geth stronghold." She turned. "Don't stand in the sun, your shields will overload. Don't try contacting the Normandy herself, as the sun's radiation _will_ interfere. We run in, we grab Tali, we run out."

"Wait, you actually know that Tali's here this time?" Garrus muttered. "You didn't know Archangel was _me."_

"Well, Tali's prettier."

"Low blow, Shepard." Garrus muttered. Next to him, Grunt sat in a full-body suit, while Mordin adjusted his helmet and gloves.

"High-risk sun. Solar radiation lethal. Risking self is unwise." He said.

"Well, Tali would probably respond well to Garrus." Shepard said. "But I'd rather convince her to join us by myself." An explosion from below rocked the shuttle. "Okay the hell was _that?!"  
_  
"That sounds like combat." Garrus slammed his fist against the door to open it and extended his rifle to look at the ground. "Quarian and Geth combat. Doesn't look like they'll last long under their firepower."

"Wait, who won't last long under _whose_ firepower?"

"Quarians. Geth." Garrus lined his sighs up and fired. The shot ricocheted off of an oblong piece of rock before crashing through the heads of three Geth troopers. The entire group turned immediately in response before Shepard shoved herself forwards and launched a grenade. The geth team scattered to avoid the ensuing explosion as it blew a gigantic crater right behind them, and she shouted over to the pilot.

 _"Take us down!"  
_  
The shuttle rushed over to the Quarians' position, gunfire slamming into its side before the team jumped out of the door and onto the ground. Shepard rolled, Garrus bent his legs, Mordin softened his descent with hamon, Jack posed like a ballerina, and Grunt _smashed_ into the dirt with enough force to send several Quarians off-balance.

"I." Grunt smirked in the only way he could; with an enormous, toothy, terrifying grin. _"Am."_ A shot glanced off of his helmet before he jumped over the barricade with a soaring leap. The geth didn't get to react before he pulled the Claymore off of his gun rack and fired, turning a rocket trooper into scrap metal. **_"KROGAN!"  
_**  
Shepard and the rest of her squad rushed to the team. "You alright?"

"Well, _better."_ The quarian said. "I saw the Cerberus ship and I was scared shitless before your friend shot a few geth."

"Hey, they looked ugly. It was a service to the galaxy." Garrus said.

"How bad is it?" Shepard said.

"Pretty fucking bad." The quarian said back. "We lost half our squad trying to take out a Colossus back at our old base. Our signal cloak shorted out. This sun is _brutal."_ He peered over cover to fire a few shots.

"Who's your CO?" Shepard asked.

"Kal'Reegar." The man said. "He's closer to the geth strongpoint. Just don't stay in the sun too long!"

Just as he said that, Shepard stood up, tore her assault rifle off of her back, and popped an adrenaline pack. The world seemed to move in slow motion around her as she jumped over cover and fired at each geth. One shot, and a geth's head exploded. Another, and a different geth's power source erupted into flames. A third, and a rocket trooper's ammo pack exploded, taking out a group of five other troopers and a pair of geth hunters.

At her side, a rocket trooper charged, but Shepard didn't let it fire a shot. She let her left hand drop from the rifle, pulled her carnifex out of its holster, and fired a shot at its foot leg. The motors seized up in the geth's leg, freezing it for a second before she fired it again and blew apart its head.

The path to a tunnel was cleared, and she motioned to everyone. "Let's _move!"  
_  
The quarians just stared in quiet shock. They turned to each other, then to her, then to each other again. Garrus then slapped one of them on the back. "You heard her. _Move your asses."_

[=]

In a different part of the station, Tali ducked behind cover before she fired her plasma shotgun. The shot shredded two geth, but a third popped up from behind them and fired an entire clip from its rifle. Tali jumped out the way with a powerful leap.

Beside her, Kal'Reegar fired his own gun, before he ducked to avoid a missile. "Bad news!" The warhead bounced across the ground before exploding against a concrete barrier.

"I don't recall there being anything else." Tali muttered. _"What?"  
_  
"All contact with the other group just died. I can't tell if it's solar interference or the geth finally got to them." He fired a series of suppressing shots. "Any suggestions?"

"What happened to that _mech?!"_ Tali shouted. "I thought we had a _mech!"  
_  
"The pilot was shot before he could even start it!"

"Keelah-" Tali fired another series of shots. "I'll get to the damn thing."

 _"What?!"_ Kal'Reegar grabbed her arm. "No, you won't! It's surrounded by geth!"

"Let me fix that." She turned to the garage on their left and dashed in and out of cover. The sun started to overload her shields, but she charged a shot and burst open the door before they failed. An unfortunate geth trooper on the other side was blown in half, before she sabotaged one and sent a combat drone out to hit the others.

The sabotaged one fell flat onto its back and exploded, as her combat drone shocked anyone stupid enough to get close. Tali grabbed the corpse in the cockpit as she muttered "Sorry" and pushed it out the other end, the body knocking over several more Geth before she jammed her omnitool into the dash.

A few clicks and whirs later, the machine roared to life inside of the garage.

[=]

Shepard and her team all walked through an enormous, empty hallway as a hot wind blew through. Dust blew past their legs, their masks were slightly dirtied, and their guns were still hot from combat. Midway through, Shepard turned to the quarians. "Okay, so what happened? What's going on?"

"Research." One of them said. "Haestrom's sun is dying."

"Lovely." Garrus said. "How bad?"

"It's only got five-hundred years left. And it's only a billion years old."

"That, uh, sounds screwy." Shepard muttered. "Is anyone left?"

"Just us, ma'am." One of them said. "We don't know if Tali and Reegar are alive."

"Their significance?" Mordin asked.

"Reegar's our CO. Tali's the head of research."

Shepard smirked under her helmet. "Movin' up in the world." She looked back. "What were they doing?"

"Tali was getting the data transferred to her omnitool. Can't upload it to orbit, and I'm almost _sure_ the geth destroyed our only way out." They turned back. "And again, still don't know if-"

He was interrupted by another gigantic explosion, and a loud _bang_ and a gust of wind blew through the halls. Everyone turned towards the fireball from outside in shock, before Grunt let out a loud cackle.

 _ **"FINALLY!"**_ Grunt roared. _**"SOMETHING TO KILL!"**_ He charged past everyone and to the outdoors.

A geth colossus stood in front of him, before it shot a missile straight towards his path. He blew the first one out of the sky with his shotgun, before a spray of gunfire sent him dashing to cover. Behind him, Shepard brought out Bodhisattva as she dashed forwards and started catching bullets. Her Stand let out a loud _**"ORA ORA ORA ORA-!"**_ as its hands blurred into nothingness, only for a missile to catch Shepard on the shield.

Both the commander and the Stand were knocked backwards as the heavily-damaged shield was promptly dissipated in the sunlight, forcing Shepard to scramble to cover as soon as she could. Garrus followed suit by aiming right at the head of the colossus, only to be forced down by suppressive fire.

And as everyone stood back, Mordin nodded. "Cannot do anything. Hamon isn't good at long range, without proper materials."

 _ **"FUCK."**_ Shepard shouted. "Okay, there's gotta be _some_ opening!" She looked back to the quarians in the hallway. One of them leaned forwards to fire, before he retreated to cover immediately after a few shots. "It got rid of my powerball!"

But then, as they were stuck in cover, a ten-meter-tall mech punched its way through a wall. The cockpit gleamed as the mechanical muscles groaned and shuddered. Behind the cockpit, Shepard could see Tali'Zorah nar Rayya piloting as she let out a string of quarian swears. Her mech did a soaring leap out of the wall and immediately landed on a group of geth soldiers, legs dragging across the surface as her shield flickered in the sunlight.

She kicked several geth troopers to pieces immediately upon landing, grabbed the head of the colossus, and pulled it over her mech in a gigantic arcing swing. The colossus crashed into a nearby wall, sending debris and rubble tumbling down as Shepard and her crew ran for their dear lives. Four legs planted themselves into the side before the colossus pulled Tali towards the same wall with its head.

 _"Holy crap,_ Tali!" Garrus shouted.

"Give 'em hell!" Shepard pumped a fist into the air, but she flinched as soon as a shot glanced off the back of her hand and pulled it right back down. _"Shit!"_

Tali clenched a giant three-fingered fist and punched the colossus in the face. The headlight shattered on impact, and the colossus itself was disoriented by the blow. It kept the momentum from the hit and smashed the still-moving head into Tali's cockpit. It smashed through the mech's hud, and the head-mounted cannon fired several times into the cockpit.

Tali shrieked in surprise and ducked as the geth's movement pulled it out of the wall. The entire colossus collapsed to the ground, as Tali's mech stumbled around, now-heavily damaged. She turned to see the colossus lying on its back in an attempt to scramble to its feet, before she jammed her mech's remaining hand into its face.

With one final missile from Tali's mech, the colossus' head exploded, but she didn't stop firing. She launched a second missile into the neck, and a third, final one into its body. The geth platform detonated into a spectacular fireball, collapsing part of the building beneath it and sending Tali's mech soaring into the air. The machine slammed into the dirt some distance away, sliding across the ground in a show of sparks before finally coming to a stop inches away from Shepard's cover.

The top of the mech came loose, and the cockpit was kicked open by Tali before she climbed out. "Shepard?"

Shepard recovered from her slack-jawed awe, before she shook her head. "Tali!"

"What are you doing here?!" Tali shouted. "You...I... _you were..."_ Her mouthpiece lit up as she stammered for several seconds, before she just slapped Shepard across the helmet with a loud _crack_. _"You were dead!"  
_  
"I got better." She said as she brought her face back towards Tali. "And, well, I was in the area." She lied. "Thought you needed a hand." She motioned to the smoking mech. "Just uh...didn't expect the mech."

"Geth tech." Tali said. "It's supposed to interface with their systems directly. I just reprogrammed it to work with the _wait what am I talking about-"_ She slapped Shepard again. _"I thought you died!"  
_  
Shepard turned her head back towards Tali. "Why are you slapping me?"

"We thought you _died!"_ Tali shouted, before she winced and rubbed her hand. "Ow."

"Yeah, you weren't the only one." Garrus said. "Also, why'd you slap Shepard while she had the helmet on?"

"I just... I can't believe it." Tali said as she ignored him. "What about Liara? And Wrex? And _Ashley?_ And _everyone?_ Half the team just dropped off the face of the _galaxy_ when we thought you died!"

"Well, I wasn't planning on dying." Shepard said back. "I can explain it on the ship." She turned. "Just make sure we can drop your group off at the Flotilla."

"I..." Tali sighed. "Okay. Okay, we can just do that. But we need to _talk."_

[=]

On the Normandy SR-2, upon removing her helmet, Shepard felt a sharp pain to the side of her face as Tali's hand smacked her across the cheek. "You _bosh'tet."  
_  
Shepard's head jerked to the head slightly to the side, before she sighed. "Never thought I'd be on the receiving end of that." Shepard muttered before she rubbed the side of her cheek.

"Well, you just were, and it turns out you joined _Cerberus,_ too." Tali slapped Shepard again. "Okay, I need to stop. I think I'm starting to bruise."

"Yeah, I've been getting that a lot." Shepard muttered. "The 'oh god it's Cerberus' part, not the bruising. Terrorist organization. Unlikable and generally kind of terrible."

"Pretty damn bad at keeping a hold on their experiments." Garrus piped in.

Mordin continued. "Incompetent. Unethical. Beyond morality and reason."

"Like to _fucking torture children?"_ Jack said, leaning out from around the corner leading to the engineering room.

"Did you come here _specifically_ to shittalk Cerberus?" Shepard asked.

"Hell yeah." Jack said back. "Even got in a big argument with bubble butt over it, too."

"Bubble...what?"

"Miranda has a huge ass."

"Oh." Shepard paused. "Wait, what the hell does that mean-" Jack shut the door before she could continue the train of thought. "...whatever." She turned to the quarians as they wandered about the shuttle bay. "There should be enough room to make yourselves comfortable. If you need nourishment, we have a supply of dextro food."

"Oddly courteous of them." Tali muttered.

"They planned on having us on-board." Garrus said. "I'll assume they know how Shepard operates. Luckily the chef is actually pretty good at dextro food."

Tali quirked up an eyebrow. "For a human?"

"Hell yes." Garrus said, before Shepard moved in.

"Also, I want to talk." She said. "Because it's a long story. Getting all of it will be a _pain in the ass."_ She pressed a button on the elevator.

Tali looked at the button labeled 'Captain's Quarters', and stared at Shepard with her eyes half-lidded as her mouthpiece lit up. "At least buy me dinner first."

[=]

"So let's be clear." Shepard sat on her couch. "Did you get all that?"

Tali leaned back in the chair on the other side of the coffee table. "Oh, the part where it turns out you were resurrected for extremely large sums of money by an organization that you don't even like?"

"Yeah, I'm technically undead." Shepard said. "And ever since I got back things have just been _really_ fucking weird."

"I'd gather." Tali shook her head. "So uh...a 'Stand', you said? What's a Stand?"

"Some kind of spirit thing." Shepard said. "I don't really know how to describe it...part of the trick is that you need to have one in order to see one."

"Well, it has an effect on the real world, right?" Tali said. "I mean, it has to be visible _somehow."  
_  
"Not in any way I know of." Shepard let Bodhisattva emerge and grabbed her headset off of her face. To Tali, it was as though the headset was floating. "It's like a flashier, weirder version of psychic powers."

Tali nodded. "...Wait, I seem to remember something about Aria getting something like this."

"Yeah, she had a Stand." Shepard said. "I don't know if she had one before."

"Well, she was already a strong biotic with a huge following." Tali muttered. "I've been to Omega. She's a real charmer."

"I knocked her out with a grenade."

Tali chuckled. "That sounds like you."

Shepard shook her head. "God, everything's been weird ever since I came back." She said. "I honestly preferred just cruising around in my spaceship with my crew. I'd talk to Wrex, he'd make a crack about how the council is a bunch of fools."

"Or the time when you told Darius to go fuck himself." Tali said back. "What was it you said? 'I've killed worse than you on my way to real problems?'"

Shepard laughed. "And I killed all his guards and broke his legs and let him cry in an infinitely small chamber."

"Serves him right." Tali sighed. "Sorry for slapping you."

"It's fine." Shepard said. "Really, it's fine."

"No. It's not." Tali shook her head. "It's been two years for us but for you..." She trailed off. "How long was it?"

Shepard stayed quiet for several long, painful seconds. She noticed that her fatigues were old. Even if they were cleaned by Cerberus post-recovery, the N7 and Alliance logos on them were still slightly faded. "I want you to imagine it." She turned. "When I was on the Normandy, it was when I was grabbing Joker."

"I remember you and Liara running over to the escape pod, before you pushed her in." Tali said. "The door slammed as she was yelling at you to get in. The next time I saw her was on the Citadel. She didn't even say anything back before just disappearing into the crowd."

Shepard squeezed her eyes shut. "Yeah." She inhaled. "I took him out of the seat after that. Broke his arm, I think." She looked up at Tali. "I put him in and ejected his pod before an explosion ripped open my suit. The pain in my chest was unimaginable. I was burning alive in the cold vacuum. And even then, I kept struggling. Trying to keep awake. Trying to find some hope as I just... _floated."_ She sighed. "And seconds later, I lost consciousness. And a few more, I woke up on a hospital bed, with my cheek cut open and an Australian woman telling me to get up."

Tali paused. "I..." She swallowed. "...I can't even imagine that, Shepard. I can't."

"And then crazy shit happens. All of this in a fucking _week."_ Shepard rubbed her temple. "I still can't believe any of this is really happening. It's like a bad fever dream crossed with an acid trip." She let a hand drop as she looked to the ceiling. "But at least I have more of the old crew back."

"At least Garrus was here." Tali said.

"I only talked to Garrus about gun stuff." Shepard said. "I kinda missed _our_ talks."

"About _Fleet and Flotilla?"  
_  
"No, that's still pretty bad." Shepard grinned.

Tali mock-gasped. "I thought you loved it!"

"I do. Just not for the right reasons."

Tali sighed. "You're terrible, Commander."

[=]

In the dead of space, the Collector ship floated. Flesh pulsed among rock, machinery whirred and twisted, and collector drones crawled along the walls like roaches. Occasionally, pods would jut out at odd angles before righting themselves with a few pulls of muscle from the walls. And in the middle of it all, above a single metal platform, Kars sat. He meditated as the sound of pulling flesh and whirring machinery echoed through the halls, jets in his thighs keeping him aloft.

He raised a finger. "Who is this 'Shepard'?" His voice clicked and whirred in an unknown language.

A voice responded.

"A soldier?" He quirked an eyebrow up. "A descendant of the Shepards." He opened his eyes. "Josephine..." He paused. "The humans would call this feeling deja vu." He stretched, pulling his arms behind his head as he did so. "It is probably a coincidence. Her surname is not that of the Joestar clan." He flipped upside-down, crossing his legs before deactivating the jets and landing in a handstand. "Where is our next destination?"

Another voice echoed.

He righted himself and began floating once again. "...When do we leave for this 'Horizon'?"

Another time, the voice echoed.

His smile grew. "Excellent. We'll make sure to give ourselves a grand entrance." He placed a hand over his face. "We should give ample warning when the time comes."


	8. Chapter 8

The crew was already in the meeting room by the next morning. Grunt sighed as he poured himself a gigantic mug of coffee, before chugging it wholesale. Tali quirked up an eyebrow to him, before she took a sip of her sterilized cup of tea through a straw. She looked over to Garrus, who himself was drinking coffee, before she sipped again.

"How's your cup?" She asked. "I didn't know they had turian coffee."

"They even bothered to get the good stuff." Garrus said. "It's a good roast and a good brew. You don't usually get that."

"This tastes like _water."_ Grunt spat, and on the other side of him, Mordin shrugged.

"Personal taste. Coffee is functional. Perfect while black." He sipped. "Needs more espresso."

"Fuck coffee." To Mordin's right was Jack, who instead had a flask that she merrily chugged. "I need to get right and liquored up."

"You could stand for a healthier lifestyle." Tali said simply.

"Okay, bubblegirl." Jack scoffed.

"I thought Miranda was bubble-butt." Garrus said. "Wasn't that what you called her?"

Miranda ignored them, before she looked at Jack. "At least I actually _have_ a figure. I mean, if you _did_ have one, you wouldn't use a _leather strap_ to hide what little you have."

Jack snorted. "Sorry, I don't use implants."

"These are _natural!"_ Miranda spat.

"Man this is some good coffee." Jacob said loudly. "Does anyone like coffee? This is some _good coffee!"  
_  
"Agreed!" Garrus said in an equally loud voice. "This coffee is _delicious!"_

"This coffee is _water!"_ And just as Grunt shouted, the door behind him opened. Shepard walked into the room, a cup of steaming hot coffee in her hand, hair still in a mess, eyes half-lidded and bags underneath. She chugged her own cup, and the still-boiling water went down so quickly that her mouth was steaming as soon as she spoke the first words of the meeting.

"Ladies, you're all pretty." Shepard muttered. "Okay, so Ilium." She said. "We've got a few contacts there. Dossiers saying that this is the most happening place in the galaxy, at least for our purposes. Another two-for-one."

"Thane Krios." Miranda tore herself away from Jack. "Drell Assassin. Probably one of the most lethal and skilled in the galaxy. Last seen in the vicinity of Ilium's mass relay."

A hologram appeared.

"Absurdly lethal with a rifle." Shepard said. "Over three-hundred confirmed kills. And those that aren't confirmed are only so because they're just that damn clean."

Another image appeared. "Samara. Asari Justicar."

Jack let out a loud catcall.

"A similar bodycount, but accumulated over several hundred years and _only_ in extreme circumstances." Miranda waved a hand. "Assume extreme caution, as Cerberus lacks good standing with the Justicars."

Shepard nodded. "Good. Now, the meeting is-"

"Actually..." Miranda cut her off. "We encountered a note that a certain someone of interest might be on the planet." A globe of Ilium appeared as she scrolled across it with a finger.

"Why wasn't this in the dossier?" Shepard asked. "That would have made things easier."

"It's because of her condition. Our benefactor-" Both Tali and Jack scoffed at the word. "-only said it would be alright to attempt to find her recently."

"Alright. Who's our mystery target?" Shepard asked, before the display in front of her flickered. The map vanished, replaced immediately by a different image.

Shepard's eyes widened. "Liara."

 **[SHEPARD'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE]**

The Normandy screamed over Ilium's skyline at high speed. A vapor trail was right behind it, and the ship itself passed above kilometer-high skyscrapers on its way to a spaceport.

Mid-flight, a shuttle popped out of the cargo hold, and the entire thing went screaming down to another bay as the crew prepared to leave. It landed close to a particularly tall skyscraper, this one even taller than the ones surrounding it. Grunt and Jack jumped down, with Jack taking a relaxed breath as soon as she hit the ground. "I can feel the breeze."

"Would not recommend such an outfit." Mordin said as he stepped out. "Chafing. Hypothermia."

"it's the fucking cold, not a goddamn toxic waste." Jack muttered.

"Still would recommend a shirt."

"No." Jack said flatly.

"A coat, perhaps?"

 _"No."  
_  
"How about armor-"

 ** _"Fuck no."_**

Jacob threw his hands into the air. "Look, we grab the assassin, then we head out. Hopefully without sedatives involved. Are we fucking clear?"

 _ **"N-!"**_ Jack paused. "Crystal."

Grunt shrugged. "Let's just go."

[=]

The Normandy herself came to a stop at a spaceport, and just as it did, Shepard, Miranda, Tali and Garrus stepped off. Steam hissed around their feet as they walked onto the platform, all heavily-armed.

In front of them was a security checkout line, with a bored-looking asari cop staring at them with a cigarette in hand as she walked forwards. "Welcome to Ilium, Shepard."

"Nice greeting party." Shepard said. "I didn't expect that."

"Cerberus told us you were coming." She extended a hand. "Pleasure to meet you. Captain O'Razza."

Shepard returned the shake. "So there are three on here?"

"Three contacts. A justicar, a drell, and an archaeologist. It's like the setup to a bad joke." She scanned the group with her eyes. "Kind of like your motley crew here."

"So why the security?" Shepard asked.

"Big business, I'm assuming." Garrus turned. "More paranoid than Noveria."

"Hit the nail on the head, there." The cop said. "White collar crime is fine and dandy. A bit less fine when guns get involved. Anyway, I'll let you get on your way. Just wanted to keep tabs, get you out of the security checkouts, make sure nobody was fucking with me. I mean, you were _dead."  
_  
"I've been getting that a _lot."_ Shepard said. "Thanks."

"Feel free to talk to us if you need anything." The cop turned back towards the Normandy as the doors shut and the locks were sealed.

[=]

Jack and the rest of the crew stared up the tower as they walked. The outside of the skyscraper was pristine, and the glass was clean to a near-mirror sheen, save for an opening close to the base. And as the group walked, it was clear that the opening wasn't the only part of the building that was incomplete.

Scaffolding lined the insides, and concrete with iron bars littered the ground floor. A few elevators were complete, but the majority of the complex required a lot of ladders in order for the workers to move to and fro.

"Visual metaphor." Mordin said. "Gorgeous outside. Incomplete inside."

"Any idea where to go?" Jack asked.

"Where else?" Grunt muttered. "We move up."

"There's a working elevator over by the ladder in front of us." Jacob said. "How about we-" Just as he said that, a salarian corpse hit the ground with a large yellow splatter. He jumped with a loud _yelp,_ while Mordin just waved a hand full of hamon over it.

"Shot in the head. Dead before hitting the ground." Mordin looked up to see an Eclipse mercenary rushing back after shoving the poor worker down. "Civilian. Needless violence, probably for kicks."

"We move. _Now."_ Jacob said, before he slammed his fist into an elevator button and opened the doors.

[=]

"Interestingly, neither LIara nor Samara are that far from one another." Miranda said as the party stepped into an elevator. She fiddled with her omnitool as the doors shut, and a map appeared on the screen. "Originally, Samara was closer to that dock we were just at, but both seem to be down close to the ground level of Ilium."

"Well, that makes things slightly easier." Shepard said. "Any idea how far apart they are?"

"They're actually in the same block." Miranda said. "Careful note about this part of Ilium. It's basically Omega with a slight sheen. This part of the city doesn't even get sunlight."

"You could say that about _all_ of Ilium." Garrus muttered. "Higher-class, but just as rotten."

"I just hope Liara's okay." Tali leaned forwards.

"If they're in the same place..." Shepard shook her head. "Really, I just hope that it's just a coincidence that Liara and Samara are in the same place."

Less than a minute later, Shepard's elevator hit the ground floor with a hiss. Trash blew about as soon as the doors opened, pieces of paper scattering across a stained concrete ground. As her crew left, they all pulled out their guns and stared at the grimy, filthy concrete streets.

Shepard rubbed the top of her shotgun as she let out a low whistle. "Place is a shithole." She turned. "So this is where you're saying Liara's at?"

Miranda nodded. "Yes. She's in a more secluded place than Samara."

Shepard turned forwards. "Okay. Liara first." She said.

Tali nodded. "Not surprising."

"Saving the girl, Shepard?" Garrus asked.

"It's been two years." Shepard said. "And the more I think about it, the more I think that our Justicar is after her." She motioned with her head. "Let's move."

[=]

Samara walked slowly through the sunless streets. As she stalked it, the scum of Ilium scrambled out of her path. Drug dealers scattered out of the alley, people ran deeper into the streets, and one particularly foolish asari held a gun to a batarian woman's skull in a tiny alleyway. She growled lowly.

"Where's the fucking money, Caneya?" She spat. "You owe me, you fucking _whore."  
_  
"You'll _pay_ for this." Caneya spat. "When my husband finds out-"

"He _won't."_ She pressed the pistol in further. "You were supposed to _pay up_ for those _shots-"_

Within a split second, Samara turned her gaze towards the assailant. She cocked her hip out, rested a hand on it and brought her feet together as she stood in an imbalanced, unstable stance. Her face was covered in shadow, and her toned muscles added more to her menacing figure.

The asari felt a chill run down her spine, before she slowly turned her head. Her eyes almost bugged out of her skull as her gun dropped to the ground.

The batarian stared at the Justicar as she walked closer. "B-by the hegemony-"

"By our code..." A low voice spoke with a rumble. "You have broken multiple laws." She stared at the woman with the pistol. "Coercion. Attempted murder. Assault." The air continued to grow thicker as the asari's eyes grew wider.

"N-no _oh goddess, no."_ The asari dropped the gun and began to run, before a biotic push slammed her into the wall. As she bounced off, a red asari Stand with her eyes plucked out of her skull and arms stretching like rubber dragged her across the ground. The woman screeched in horror as she was suddenly pulled from the ground and straight towards Samara.

"May you find peace in the embrace of the Goddess." Samara's free hand flickered with yellow power, before the tugging continued into a high-speed pull. _**"SUNLIGHT YELLOW."**_ Her hand dug into the asari's chest as she grabbed her heart. _**"CRUSH."**_ She squeezed.

There was a loud splattering noise as purple blood emerged from the wound. Samara pulled her arm out of the asari's chest slowly, taking care to avoid , pieces of her heart still over it as she flicked it away, before she turned to the other woman.

She whimpered as Samara narrowed her eyes. "You are a victim in this instance. The code permits you to leave." Samara said. "Though if you are further involved with her crimes, then I will be forced to hunt you down when I am done with my primary mission here."

The batarian dashed out of the back of the alleyway, hands held to her chest as she shivered. Samara turned, her diversion finished, as she resumed her search.

[=]

Jacob's elevator made its the twentieth story, and they were greeted by the sound of shouting on the other side of the door. Everyone raised their weapons, save for Jack, who raised her hands above her head like a pretty ballerina.

Grunt stared at her for a good few seconds. "Are you damaged?"

Jack glared back. "Fuck you." She then resumed her pose as the door opened.

Dozens of mercenaries stood as a group behind the door, all of them already armed and ready. The guns were aimed straight at the group, and in front of them, a single human Eclipse mercenary stood. She kept her gun raised, before she began to speak. "First question. Who the hell are you?"

"Just a bunch of nobodies." Jacob said back.

"Nobodies. One of which has a Cerberus uniform." The woman said. "Mind telling me why you're up here?"

"Curiosity." Mordin said.

"Interesting. So _that's_ why you're-" She was cut off when Jack went into the next position. "-okay that's weird."

"She seems to be losing her mind." Grunt said.

"Seems like it." The mercenary aimed a gun. "Now she'll be dead-"

And it was then that Jack broke into all-out dancing. All guns fired upon her just as an enormous, powerful biotic shield popped up, stopping their bullets before she blasted it out, collapsing the floor above her as several mercenaries were sent flying. Jacob shot the woman in the chest and sent her flying backwards into a hole in the scaffolding.

"Nice one, Jack!"

"Don't compliment me!" Jack shouted before she did a pirouette up through several more stories of building.

Mordin scraped his scalpel across the chest of an eclipse merc, before he kicked the body into another merc and let them explode. "Little effort necessary! Carnage guaranteed!"

Grunt, meanwhile, punched one asari, bit down on a salarian's head, and blew away the top half of a human as he charged through the room. "This is _amazing!"_ He roared with laughter as blood of all different colors splattered against the ground. "Your crew is a _good one, Shepard!"_

[=]

"Any updates on team Krios?" Shepard asked.

"None yet." Miranda said back. "No fatalities, though."

"They have a krogan and a walking bomb. They're probably fine." Garrus muttered, before he spotted something several dozen meters down the hall. "Is that a...?" He paused.

"What is it?" Shepard asked, before he motioned for her to stay quiet. He pointed forwards, and Shepard turned to look.

In an alleyway, an asari could be seen over a corpse. Blood splattered against the concrete floor as she ripped into its flesh. Occasionally, she would use biotics to crack bone and pull it away to get to the fresh meat, and all the while the body kept growing thinner.

Shepard's eyes widened as the asari kept devouring the corpse of her brethren, before she jabbed a hand into the corpse's neck.

Any blood that was left was sucked out, as she drank, and she slowly let out a sigh of relief and satisfaction as the body was sucked completely dry. She sat on her knees and stared up at the buildings above as she murmured. "By the goddess..."

Shepard's eyes widened as soon as she heard the voice. "Liara?"

Immediately, the vampire turned to Shepard. The look of satisfaction quickly turned to that of horror, then revulsion at what she had done. She jumped back from the body. _"Shepard?!"  
_  
And then Samara slammed into the corpse, palms-first, and detonated the ground with an enormous explosion of biotic power and hamon.

[=]

Nassanna paced the room as the muffled sound of gunfire echoed through the building. She turned to the microphone. "What the hell am I _paying you for?!"_ She roared. _"Stop them!"  
_  
"Uh, boss?" An eclipse mercenary raised her hand. "I think that they're mostly dead. Like 99%."

 _"Fuck."_ She spat. "Fucking _fuck."_ She sighed. "What, is their assassin that damn _good?_ There's gotta be something."

Over her head, on the roof, sat a Drell. He relaxed as he stared down the barrel of his rifle, the ornate engravings gleaming in the evening sun. He peered down the sights, into the reflection on another, similarly empty building, then onto a parked skycar's roof and straight into Nassana's room upon the head of an Eclipse mercenary. He let out a slow breath, hamon rippling through his body before he coughed lightly.

The flow was disrupted, his gun's power slightly lessened, but even then, his aim did not waver.

On the other side of the room the door burst open with a cloud of dust and debris. The ruined limbs of mercenaries bounced across the ground, and an asari head rolled to Nassana's feet.

Through the cloud, Grunt sighed with satisfaction as he walked into the room first. He was coated in the blood of many, _many_ Eclipse mercenaries. "Greetings." He said in a low, growling voice as he lowered his shotgun. "How're you today?"

"What he said." Jack smirked as she walked in behind him, covered in a similarly absurd amount of blood.

"Not bad for a dancer." Grunt scoffed.

"Eat shit."

Jacob held his own gun up, still panting. "That was fun."

"Fun isn't the word." Mordin said. "Exhilirating, perhaps? Refreshing? Certainly bloody." Despite the carnage, he was still completely clean. "Very much so."

Nassana stared at them. _"You_ are the ones that tore through my hires?" She spat. _"Four of you?"  
_  
"Well, uh..." Jack paused to look behind her at a mercenary that was struggling to pick himself up. "...yeah."

"I paid _how much_ for them to be torn apart by _four fucking people?!"_ Nassana shouted.

"Well to be fair." A merc started. "One's a krogan."

"And the other three _aren't."_ Nassana snarled. "So what, did you come to kill me? Put a bullet in my head? Fucking what?"

"Actually, we didn't even know you were here." Jacob said. "Pretty sure nobody knows who the hell you are, either."

Her jaw dropped. "...what."

"You heard him." Jack said. "We're here for some other guy. An assassin."

And just as she said that, the drell on the roof fired his rifle.

The shot traveled at the speed of light to the empty window. The bullet split into two more, and the window itself shattered as the rest of the bullet passed down to the car roof. The thing dented as the bullet continued traveling, slightly enlarged, before shattering and splitting another window and hitting an eclipse trooper's helmet.

The shot shattered her visor and decapitated her, sending the head flying to the ceiling, before traveling to another and snapping his neck, then a third, then a fourth and a fifth.

Finally, the bullet traveled to Nassana's chest, where it shattered her ribcage and sent blood spurting out of her mouth. She stumbled backwards into a window, her mouth gasping for a breath that would never come.

And then, through the vents, a drell descended. A rifle, still-smoking, was on his back, as he crossed Nassana's arms and raised his hands to pray.

The rest of the group stared at him, then at the bodies laying around the room. Jacob was the first to ask. "Thane Krios, right?"

"Yes." He said. "My name is Thane Krios."

[=]

The dust settled around Shepard and her team, everyone laying flat on their backs after the impact of Samara's landing. The concrete had shattered under the force of the Justicar's entrance, and the corpse underneath was reduced to little more than a smear among rubble. Samara's form rippled, and the clouds around her dissipated while the blood dripped from her body, leaving her clean.

The vampire's eyes widened as the Justicar walked forwards. _"Stay back!"_ Liara shouted. Her hand trembled as her eyes darted between the Justicar and Shepard.

Samara frowned, before her Stand emerged from her back. "The code has yet to truly categorize you." She narrowed her eyes. "But you are a _danger._ And as such?" She pointed. "You must be eradicated."

Shepard scrambled to her feet. "Liara!" She glared at the Justicar as she brought up her pistol. "No, you _aren't touching her!"  
_  
Samara stared Shepard down. "Is that so, Commander?" Samara's Stand flexed its hands. "I do not wish to use _Rubber Band Man_ on you _."  
_  
Shepard's own Stand emerged from her back. "And I really, _really_ don't want Boddhi to make a mess of things." She sneered. "So let. Her. _Go."_

[=]

The Mass Relay flickered to life as a single Omega cruiser emerged.


End file.
